Mint Hill sees 73.4% rise in Medicaid dental service payments for 2024

Mint Hill Medicaid providers billed $659,548 in 2024 for services listed under the Dental Services category, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database shows. That figure represents a 73.4% rise from 2023, when $380,303 was billed for the same category.

Medicaid, a public health insurance program overseen by individual states and funded by federal and state governments jointly, provides coverage for low-income people, families, children, seniors and those with disabilities. As such, it constitutes a major portion of the national health care network.

Because Medicaid funding comes from taxpayers, shifts in local billing data help indicate how public dollars are spent on health care in specific communities.

The “Dental Services” category includes an array of Medicaid billable treatments defined by type, based on specific HCPCS and CPT code clusters. For this review, each billing code was mapped to one service category using standardized prefixes and number ranges to assemble related services, avoid duplicate counts, and ensure accurate historical ranking.

Dentals Services was the fifth-largest Medicaid payment category in Mint Hill in 2024, though spending increased across several categories.

Statewide in North Carolina, Dental Services was ranked as the ninth-highest Medicaid payment category in 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Medicaid payments linked to Dental Services in Mint Hill grew $292,894, or 79.9%. Growth was faster during certain periods, with significant year-to-year increases recorded in both 2021 and 2023.

Dental Services spending in Mint Hill was recorded throughout the city, though payments were heavily concentrated within a handful of ZIP codes. In 2024, the bulk of Medicaid payments in this category were tied to ZIP code 28227, totaling $659,547. As a result, these leading ZIP codes represented 100% of the city’s Dental Services Medicaid payments that year.

A small number of specific billing codes accounted for the majority of Medicaid payments within the Dental Services category.

Compared to the 73.4% jump in Dental Services payments from 2023 to 2024, all Medicaid claim categories in Mint Hill increased by just 7.3% in the same period.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined federal and state Medicaid expenditures totaled about $871.7 billion in fiscal 2023, representing nearly 18% of national health spending, up from $613.5 billion in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This roughly 40% growth has been largely fueled by higher enrollment numbers and increased use during and following the pandemic.

Recent federal budgets approved during the Trump administration introduced broad proposals to cut federal Medicaid funding and reform the system. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law in 2025, is expected to cut more than $1 trillion in federal Medicaid spending over 10 years and adds policies including work requirements and more cost-sharing, which may reduce access and funding for certain recipients. These reforms may shift further costs onto states and slow federal spending growth, despite Medicaid’s continued service to tens of millions nationwide.

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.