Medicaid claims for COVID-19 services in New Iberia reached $884,535 in 2024, up 13.6% over prior year

New Iberia Medicaid providers claimed at least $884,535 in 2024 for services billed under HCPCS codes directly tied to COVID-19, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database shows. That total marks a 13.6% increase from 2023, when providers submitted $778,843 for services using the same codes.

Medicaid, one of the nation’s largest health insurance programs, is operated by individual states and receives joint funding from both state and federal governments. Coverage extends to low-income families and individuals, seniors, children, and people with disabilities.

Since taxpayer funds support Medicaid, shifts in billing locally reflect how public health care resources are distributed within a given area.

For this report, HCPCS codes marked in billing records or reference data as “COVID-19” or “coronavirus” were used to identify relevant services. This means the totals represent only those services specifically labeled as COVID-related in the databases, and do not include other care potentially linked to the pandemic but billed under general or different medical codes.

By comparison, New Orleans reported the highest Medicaid claims tied to COVID-19 services in Louisiana in 2024, at $1,432,965.

In New Iberia, five providers billed Medicaid for COVID-19–related services in 2024. The Immunoassay code was the most frequently billed, totaling $884,023.

Average Medicaid payments per provider for COVID-19 services in New Iberia stood at $176,907, surpassing the statewide average of $47,068.

During the pandemic, services identified as COVID-19–specific drove a significant portion of Medicaid spending growth in New Iberia.

All other Medicaid categories in New Iberia saw total payments increase by $11,758,229 between 2020 and 2024, a 31.7% rise.

For the two years before the pandemic, annual average Medicaid payments in New Iberia were $36,950,626.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, combined federal and state Medicaid expenditures totaled about $871.7 billion for fiscal year 2023. This made up roughly 18% of the nation’s health spending, a substantial jump from $613.5 billion in 2019, before the pandemic began.

This change represents growth of nearly 40% over only a few years, prompted primarily by increased enrollment and greater use of the program during and after the pandemic.

Recent federal budget acts passed under the Trump administration, including the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed in 2025, have put forth plans to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $1 trillion over the coming decade. The legislation also introduces measures such as new work requirements and increased cost sharing, and could reduce funding and coverage for certain enrollees. Experts expect these changes will require states to pick up more of the bill and could slow federal Medicaid growth, even as the program continues to serve tens of millions nationwide.

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

The information in this article is drawn from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Medicaid Provider Spending database. The source data is available here.