Sun City Medicaid spending on surgery climbs 21.6% in 2024

Sun City Medicaid providers billed a total of $859,057 for services in the Surgery category in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This represents a 21.6% gain over 2023, when $706,694 was billed for the same category of care.

Medicaid operates as a state-run public insurance program, funded jointly by the federal and state governments. It serves low-income residents, families, seniors, children and people with disabilities as a significant component of the nation’s health care system.

Because Medicaid is funded by taxpayers, changes in billing at the local level highlight how public health care spending is distributed in the community.

The “Surgery” category includes services billed to Medicaid as identified by standardized HCPCS and CPT groupings. For this report, billing codes were assigned to specific service categories using consistent prefixes and numerical ranges, grouping related services together while preventing overlaps and maintaining accurate rankings over time.

While Medicaid expenditures increased in several service categories, Surgery placed fifth in Sun City for total Medicaid payments in 2024.

Statewide in Arizona, the Surgery category was ninth by total Medicaid payments for 2024.

Over the five-year period ending in 2024, Medicaid payments for Surgery services in Sun City rose by $419,035, for an increase of 95.2%. Some years saw accelerated growth, especially during 2023 and 2021, reflecting notable year-over-year gains.

Although spending on Surgery services occurred citywide, most Medicaid payments were concentrated within a small set of ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 85351 received $800,198 and 85375 accounted for $58,858. Together, these two ZIP codes made up 100% of Medicaid Surgery-related payments for Sun City during the year.

Within the Surgery category, payment distribution was focused on select billing codes.

To compare, Surgery service payments in Sun City grew 21.6% from 2023 to 2024, whereas all Medicaid claim categories in the city increased 10.2% over the same time period.

Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show that combined federal and state Medicaid spending was about $871.7 billion during fiscal year 2023. That amounted to roughly 18% of the nation’s health expenditure total, up strongly from roughly $613.5 billion in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This reflects nearly 40% growth in several years, largely attributed to higher enrollment and service use during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budget measures implemented under the Trump administration featured large cuts to federal Medicaid funding and major restructuring proposals. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to trim federal Medicaid spending by over $1 trillion during the next decade. In addition, it introduces policies like work requirements and enhanced cost-sharing, which could narrow coverage and reduce funding for specific groups, shifting additional costs to states and slowing federal Medicaid growth even as demand remains high.

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.