Coquille Medicaid spending for Pathology and Laboratory Procedures climbs 16.3% in 2024

In 2024, Medicaid providers in Coquille billed $282,316 for services in the Pathology and Laboratory Procedures category, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database show. That represents a 16.3% increase from 2023, when providers billed $242,812 for similar services.

Medicaid is a public health insurance program managed by individual states and financed through both federal and state contributions. The program provides coverage for low-income people, families, seniors, children, and disabled individuals, making it one of the largest segments within the U.S. health care system.

Because taxpayer funding supports Medicaid, fluctuations in local billing reveal how public health funding is used within a community.

The “Pathology and Laboratory Procedures” category includes Medicaid-billed services grouped by care type, based on standardized HCPCS and CPT coding. In this analysis, each billing code was matched to a relevant service category using consistent code prefixes and ranges, so similar services could be tracked together without double counting, ensuring comparability over time.

While Medicaid outlays rose in several service categories, Pathology and Laboratory Procedures was the second-largest by total payments in Coquille for 2024.

Statewide, the Pathology and Laboratory Procedures category was the sixth-highest by Medicaid payments in Oregon during 2024.

Between 2019 and 2024, Medicaid payments in Coquille tied to this category rose by $132,195, or 88.1%. Certain years, including 2021 and 2023, saw particularly strong annual growth in spending.

Spending in this category was present throughout Coquille but concentrated in a small number of ZIP codes. In 2024, ZIP code 97423 had the highest Medicaid payments for this category, totaling $282,315. All Medicaid spending in this category in Coquille for the year was accounted for by this ZIP code.

Within Pathology and Laboratory Procedures, a small set of billing codes made up the majority of Medicaid payments.

By comparison, Medicaid spending in Coquille for this category increased 16.3% from 2023 to 2024, surpassing the 9.2% growth across all Medicaid claim categories in the city during that period.

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

This growth amounts to approximately 40% over a few years, propelled largely by enrollment increases and higher utilization during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budget laws under the Trump administration featured major proposals to reduce federal Medicaid spending and restructure the program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” approved in 2025, is set to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over 10 years and enacts measures such as work requirements and increased cost-sharing, potentially reducing coverage and funding for some enrollees. These shifts are expected to transfer additional costs to states and limit federal Medicaid growth, even as the program continues to serve tens of millions nationally.

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.