Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on Wednesday the Senate budget resolution would propose Medicaid savings of $14 billion over five years.

Frist told an America’s Health Insurance Plans forum that the proposed level of spending would slow the growth of Medicaid, the joint federal-state health care program for the poor, from a projected 7.4 percent rate to 7.2 percent.

The Bush administration proposed $45 billion in Medicaid savings over 10 years in its budget plan released last month.

Frist said the Senate budget resolution would not include specific program changes to Medicaid. Those would be determined in the next few months.

He described Medicaid as “challenging,” saying “it needs to be modernized. It does need to be reformed.”