Medicaid Fee Schedules by State: Where Each State Publishes Its Rates

Commercial payers keep their rates in contracts and, since 2022, in enormous machine-readable files. Medicaid is the opposite: the rates are a public fee schedule that the state sets and posts. The hard part is not access. It is knowing which of a state's several schedules applies, and knowing when the schedule is not what actually pays the claim.

The short version

• Every state publishes Medicaid fee-for-service rates through its Medicaid agency. The table below links 45 states and DC to the official source; for the other 5 it says why there is no link rather than guess.
• Publishing is now a federal requirement. Under 42 CFR 447.203(b)(1), states had to post all fee-for-service rates publicly by July 1, 2026, and must keep them current.
• Most Medicaid claims are not paid off that schedule. Roughly three in four enrollees are in managed care plans, which pay under their own contracts — often written as a percentage of the state schedule.
• Medicaid pays well under Medicare. Around 71% of Medicare for common physician services in 2024, on the most recent national estimate, with wide variation by state.

Why every state now has to publish

Medicaid rates have always been public in principle, because the state sets them. In practice they were scattered: some behind portal logins, some in PDFs buried in provider manuals, some only on request.

The Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services final rule (CMS-2442-F), published May 10, 2024, changed that. It added a payment-rate transparency requirement to federal regulation at 42 CFR 447.203(b)(1). States must publish all Medicaid fee-for-service payment rates on a website accessible to the general public, with the first publication covering rates in effect as of July 1, 2026 and due by that date. They must show when the rates were last updated and post any approved change within a month.

The same rule requires a comparative payment rate analysis: each state compares its fee-for-service rates for a set of evaluation and management codes in primary care, obstetric and gynecological care, and outpatient mental health and substance use disorder services against Medicare's rates, and publishes the comparison every two years. If you want to know how your state's Medicaid E/M rates stack up against Medicare, your state agency is now obliged to tell you.

The fee schedule is not what most Medicaid claims pay

This is the caveat that trips practices up.

About 75% of Medicaid beneficiaries are enrolled in comprehensive managed care organizations, according to KFF's analysis of 2023 data. When you see one of those patients, the claim goes to the managed care plan, and the plan pays you under its contract with you — not directly off the state's fee schedule.

The state schedule still matters, for three reasons:

1. Many managed care contracts are written as a percentage of it. "100% of the state Medicaid fee schedule" is a common term. When the state changes its schedule, those contracts move with it.
2. Some states set rate floors. North Carolina, for example, publishes fee schedules that mark rates managed care plans must pay at no less than 100% of the fee-for-service rate.
3. Fee-for-service members still exist in every state — and in some populations and services, they are the majority.

A few states have almost no statewide physician fee schedule to speak of. Tennessee's TennCare is delivered through managed care, so most physician rates are set in each plan's contract; the state's schedules cover a narrower set of services.

One more boundary worth knowing: the federal Transparency in Coverage rules that force commercial payers to publish their negotiated rates apply to group health plans and to issuers in the individual and group markets. Medicaid is not part of them. Medicaid managed care rates therefore do not appear in the files commercial payers publish — which is also why RateBench, which reads those files, does not cover Medicaid.

How Medicaid rates compare with Medicare

Nationally, Medicaid pays physicians substantially less than Medicare. The long-running Medicaid-to-Medicare fee index put Medicaid at 72% of Medicare in 2019 across 27 common services — 67% for primary care. The most recent update, by Urban Institute researchers in Health Affairs in May 2025, estimates Medicaid physician fees at about 71% of Medicare in 2024: roughly 69% for office visits, 68% for hospital and emergency department visits, 87% for obstetric care and 79% for other services.

Those are national averages across very different states. Some states pay at or near Medicare for some services; others pay well under the average. Your own state's comparative payment rate analysis, required under the 2024 rule, is the most direct answer for E/M codes.

How to read your state’s fee schedule

Match the date of service, not the download date. Most states publish several schedules a year and some update monthly. The rate that applies is the one in effect on the date of service.

Pick the right schedule for your provider type. States commonly publish separate schedules for physicians, behavioral health, dental, therapy, DME and facilities — and many pay non-physician practitioners a percentage of the physician rate.

Check the setting and the modifiers. Office versus facility, professional versus technical component, and modifier-specific rates all appear in most physician schedules.

Expect a licence screen. CPT codes and descriptions are copyrighted by the American Medical Association, so many states make you accept a CPT licence agreement before the download or the lookup tool opens. That click is normal.

A listed rate is not a promise of payment. State agencies say so in plain terms — Arizona's AHCCCS, for one, notes that a code and rate appearing on its site is not an indication of coverage or a guarantee of payment. Coverage limits, prior authorization and eligibility still apply.

State-by-state: where each Medicaid fee schedule is published

Each link goes to the state Medicaid agency's own page, as checked in September 2026. Where we couldn't confirm an address, the row says so instead of guessing — no link beats a wrong one. State sites reorganise often; if a link has moved, searching the agency name with "fee schedule" will find the current page. The state name links to the commercial payers we read in that state.

Where this leaves a practice

For Medicaid, the state publishes the reference rate and your managed care contracts are usually pegged to it — so the work is reading your state's schedule for the right date, provider type and setting, then checking your managed care remits against the percentage your contract names.

For commercial payers the situation is reversed: there is no public schedule at all, only each payer's own published file of what it negotiated with you. That is the problem RateBench solves. If you want the commercial side of your reimbursement laid out as clearly as your state's Medicaid schedule, see how to find your contracted rate for any CPT code, or look up a rate from a commercial payer in your state.

RateBench reads the negotiated-rate files commercial payers are required to publish and returns the rate for your own NPI, by CPT code, with a link to the source file. It does not cover Medicaid or Medicare. A single rate lookup is free; a multi-payer fee schedule is on a paid plan.