Mastic Beach Medicaid ambulance and transport spending jumps to $273,137 in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Mastic Beach submitted $273,137 in claims for Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies, based on data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This amount represents a 628.5% increase over 2023, when claims for the same service totaled $37,494.

Medicaid, managed by states and financed through a partnership of federal and state governments, covers low-income people, families, seniors, children, and those with disabilities, making it a major component of the U.S. health care system. More details on its funding are available here.

Since Medicaid is funded by taxpayers, shifts in local billing figures reflect how public health care funds are distributed within a community.

The “Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies” category encompasses services grouped according to the type of care delivered, organized with standard HCPCS and CPT code frameworks. For this analysis, each billing code was allocated to one category using consistent code prefixes and number ranges, allowing related services to be grouped together while ensuring no double counting and supporting accurate trend analysis.

Although Medicaid expenditures increased across several categories, Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies was the second-highest category in Mastic Beach by total Medicaid payments in 2024.

Statewide, the Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies category ranked eighth in total Medicaid payments across New York in 2024.

Through the five-year period leading up to 2024, Medicaid payments for the Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies category in Mastic Beach rose by $273,137, or 0%. Accelerated growth occurred at points in the timeline, with considerable yearly increases in 2023 and 2022.

Medicaid spending on Ambulance and Other Transport Services and Supplies was distributed throughout the city, though it was mostly concentrated in a few ZIP codes. For 2024, ZIP code 11951 recorded $273,137 in Medicaid payments for the category. The top single ZIP code accounted for 100% of Mastic Beach payments in this group for the year.

Within the category, a small subset of billing codes saw the majority of Medicaid payments.

To compare, Medicaid payments for this category in Mastic Beach were up 628.5% between 2024 and 2023, while all Medicaid claim categories in the city grew by 5% over the same period.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, total Medicaid spending by both federal and state governments reached about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, or roughly 18% of total national health expenses. That amount is a sharp increase from about $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This jump represents a nearly 40% gain in a few years, mostly due to higher enrollment and greater service utilization tied to the pandemic period and its aftermath.

Recently enacted federal budget measures during the Trump administration proposed substantial reductions to federal Medicaid support and restructured the program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion in the next decade and introduce rules including work requirements and higher cost-sharing, potentially reducing coverage and funding for some beneficiaries. These changes are likely to shift additional financial responsibility to states and restrain federal Medicaid growth, even as the program continues covering tens of millions of Americans.

Note: HCPCS codes are shown for context within the category. Category totals and rankings in this article are based on standardized service groupings rather than individual billing codes.

Information in this article was obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. The source data can be found here.