JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate, played fast and loose with his state's Medicaid enrollment numbers this week as he spoke in Washington and chatted up voters in the early primary state of New Hampshire.
"Our rolls dropped from 750,000 to 580,000 in the first couple of years," Barbour said Tuesday on Capitol Hill, referring to Medicaid enrollment trends after he took office in January 2004. That would be a 22.7 percent decline.
The problem is, Barbour's numbers are misleading, according to statistics provided by his own administration.
The Mississippi Governor's Office Division of Medicaid had a different way of counting Medicaid enrollment under Barbour's predecessor, Democrat Ronnie Musgrove. The program changed its counting method in 2006, about midway through Barbour's first term.
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