Alcohol and drug abuse treatment Medicaid payments near $2 million in Zebulon in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Zebulon billed $1,951,028 for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment services, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending data. This amount represents a 99.6% jump from 2023, when providers filed $977,599 in claims for the same category.

Medicaid, a public health insurance program governed by states and co-funded by both federal and state governments, serves low-income individuals and families, seniors, children and people with disabilities. It remains one of the nation’s largest health care programs.

Since Medicaid payments are taxpayer-funded, levels of local billing show how public health care resources are distributed in a community.

The “Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment” category consists of services billed to Medicaid based on the specific care provided and grouped by consistent HCPCS and CPT code sets. For this analysis, each code was included in a single service group using uniform code prefixes and numeric ranges, enabling tracking of similar services without double counting and preserving rankings across years.

The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment category led all categories in Zebulon’s Medicaid spending totals for 2024.

Statewide in North Carolina, Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment placed fourth by total Medicaid expenditures in 2024.

From the five-year period ending in 2024, Medicaid payments for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment in Zebulon expanded by $1,664,384, or about 580.6%. There were notable periods of accelerated growth, especially in 2023 and 2020.

Though Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment payments were reported across the city, most spending was associated with a small group of ZIP codes. In 2024, the 27597 ZIP code accounted for $1,951,027 in Medicaid funding for the category—with the top ZIP codes making up 100% of payments in Zebulon for the year.

Medicaid billing within Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment also centered on only a select number of codes.

Comparing the years, Medicaid payments for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment in Zebulon rose 99.6% from 2023 to 2024, while overall Medicaid spending for all categories grew 14% in the city over the same time frame.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, federal and state Medicaid spending combined reached about $871.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, constituting around 18% of national health expenditures. This is up significantly from roughly $613.5 billion in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This increase—around 40% over a few years—has been driven primarily by enrollment growth and increasing utilization in the pandemic and post-pandemic period.

Recent federal budgets signed during the Trump administration have included significant measures to cut federal Medicaid funding and redesign the program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion in the next decade and introduce items such as work requirements and higher cost-sharing. These changes are expected to limit federal growth and shift costs to states, possibly reducing coverage and funding for some beneficiaries, even as the program continues to serve millions.

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.