$1.26 Trillion Savings Under Romney Medicaid Plan

And there would be fewer rules binding states

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would strip Medicaid of $1.26 trillion over nine years as part of a plan to do away with the open-ended approach to funding the U.S. health-insurance plan for the poor, a Bloomberg Government study found.

Romney proposes to convert Medicaid to a fixed allotment of money from an entitlement tied to economic indicators and a state's caseload. Payments from the federal government would grow at 1 percentage point above inflation a year, creating the funding reduction, in exchange for fewer rules on how states use the money, according to the study released yesterday.