JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - House and Senate negotiators settled Thursday on a plan to save money in the Medicaid program with a series of program reductions.

The curtailing services and reductions in reimbursements to doctors and pharmacists who participate in Medicaid are to save $60 million to $70 million a year and help bail Medicaid out of financial turmoil.

Medicaid officials fear they will run out of money next week for the 650,000-plus recipients with no medical help.

The compromise version of a bailout bill could come up for votes of the full House and Senate on Friday.

House negotiators had pushed for assessments on each medical provider in the state, a fee to pump more money into Medicaid rather than reduce services. The proposal, House members said, would have provided $80 million to Medicaid before the 3-to-1, federal-to-state match.

Led by Senate President Pro Tempore Travis Little, D-Corinth, senators complained the fee would be fair only if attached to Medicaid services. Little said he had heard complaints from pharmacists back home that the proposal could put some of them out of business.

House members were not convinced.

"When are we going to stop worrying about our districts and start worrying about the Medicaid program?" said Rep. Steve Holland, D-Plantersville. "The headline needs to read tomorrow: 'Major train wreck coming soon. Stay tuned."'

Lawmakers are trying to reach a quick compromise. The Medicaid program is running a deficit of $158 million in the fiscal year that ends June 30.

"The problem with the assessments was that you were taxing 36 percent of the doctors who had nothing to do with Medicaid," said Senate Public Health and Welfare Chairman Robert "Bunky" Huggins, R-Greenwood.

Huggins said it was unfair to "pick out a class and say you're going to be taxed when you don't have anything to do with it."

Included in the moneysaving changes are requiring Medicaid patients to pay $3 for each prescription instead of the current $1, and allowing them seven prescriptions a month instead of the current 10.

The compromise includes a 5 percent reduction in state-paid fees to doctors and hospitals.

The bill also takes millions of dollars from a tobacco trust fund this year and next, with a provision that the money be repaid in more robust economic times.

The conferees agreed to increase the $2 per bed now paid by nursing homes to $3 per bed. That would bring in about $6. 7 million, said Medicaid executive director Rica Lewis Payton. Nursing homes would not be cut the 5 percent.

Medicaid is a federal-state health care plan for the needy, aged, blind and disabled.