Medicaid claims for COVID-19 services reach $29,590 in Bethlehem for 2024

In 2024, Medicaid payments in Bethlehem exceeded $29,590 for services billed using HCPCS codes directly linked to COVID-19, based on figures from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. This amount reflects a 16.1% rise compared to the prior year, when $25,498 in claims tied to the same codes were submitted by providers.

Medicaid, a publicly funded health insurance initiative, is administered by states and financed through both federal and state contributions. The program helps low-income residents, seniors, children, and people with disabilities, making it a major component of the national health care system.

As Medicaid is funded by the public, fluctuations in local claim volumes reveal shifts in how health care spending is prioritized in a community.

To conduct this analysis, only HCPCS codes identified as “COVID-19” or “coronavirus”-related in either billing descriptions or reference sources were included. This means the totals reflect just those services labeled as tied to COVID-19 in administrative data, excluding broader care that may be associated with the pandemic but billed under other codes.

Comparing statewide, Pittsburgh had the highest Medicaid payments for virus-related services in Pennsylvania in 2024, totaling $266,441 in COVID-specific claims.

Within Bethlehem, two distinct providers billed Medicaid for COVID-19-related procedures in 2024. Of these, the most frequently used code, COVID Specific, saw $29,007 billed.

On average, each provider in Bethlehem claimed $14,795 for COVID-19–related Medicaid services in 2024, which is above the Pennsylvania average of $6,645 per provider.

In Bethlehem, services specifically linked to COVID-19 remained a minimal driver of overall Medicaid payment increases during pandemic years.

Total Medicaid payments in all other claim groups grew by $44,910,572 from 2020 to 2024, marking a 140.6% jump.

For comparison, in the two years prior to the pandemic, average annual Medicaid claims in the city were $10,194,346.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, total state and federal spending on Medicaid reached approximately $871.7 billion during fiscal year 2023. This figure represented about 18% of the country’s total health expenditures and marked a significant increase from the nearly $613.5 billion spent in 2019, before the COVID-19 crisis.

That rise translates to growth of about 40% in only a few years, propelled mostly by increased enrollment and a greater demand for services during and after the pandemic.

Recent budget acts enacted in the Trump administration include large-scale proposals aimed at decreasing federal Medicaid contributions and changing aspects of the program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” enacted in 2025, is expected to reduce federal Medicaid funding by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. It introduces several changes, such as work requirements and additional cost-sharing, that could limit coverage and shift more financial responsibility to states, even while tens of millions continue to rely on the program nationwide.

Note: Includes HCPCS codes explicitly labeled for COVID-19 services; totals do not represent all pandemic-related health care spending.

This article is based on information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. The original source data is available here.