The nation's largest Jewish organization announced Tuesday that it's convening other religious groups to fight Medicaid cuts, the same day a nonpartisan coalition of providers and health plans separately launched an ad campaign against the cuts.

The Jewish Federation of North America says it's partnering with other major faith-based groups - Lutheran Services of America, Catholic Health Association and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism among them - to fight against Medicaid cuts. As part of its effort, the federation examined how the federal Medicaid funding cuts called for in House Republicans' budget proposal would affect the nation's largest cities.

Meanwhile, the Partnership for Medicaid launched an ad campaign to push back against Medicaid cuts that are on the table as part of debt ceiling talks. Advocates believe the $1 trillion in domestic spending cuts that the White House has put on the table includes $100 billion in Medicaid cuts, the same amount that President Obama called for in his April 13 deficit reduction speech.

Lieberman and Coburn's proposal includes several politically risky benefit changes.

Federal officials and the Ad Council are joining hands for a humorous public service campaign aimed at reducing food poisoning in the home.

The "Food Safe Families" campaign coincides with the July 4 weekend and the start of the summer grilling season. It consists of several television public service announcements depicting safe food-handling techniques, created pro bono by the ad agency JWT New York.

"Our food safety strategy is based on preventing food safety problems, and these efforts must begin where food is produced and continue where food is processed and marketed," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. "Consumers also play a role in preventing food safety problems by properly handling, preparing and storing food in the home. This campaign will help consumers understand their role in farm-to-table safety.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) on Tuesday warned that the Obama administration's planned survey of patient access to primary care doctors in the U.S. could impose significant costs on doctors and needlessly waste U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Kirk said he has "great concern" about what he called the administration's planned "stealth survey," which was first reported in The New York Times on Sunday. That report said the administration plans to have fake patients try to set up appointments with doctors in order to gauge patient access to these doctors.

Almost half a million seniors on Medicare had saved a combined $260 million on their medicines by the end of last month thanks to the healthcare reform law, the Obama administration announced Tuesday.

A total of 478,272 people have taken advantage of the law's 50 percent prescription discount for seniors in the Medicare "doughnut hole," according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The month of May saw a sharp increase in the number of beneficiaries benefiting from the provision, up 76 percent from 270,900 at the end of April.

"As more and more beneficiaries hit the donut hole through the rest of this year," CMS Administrator Don Berwick said in a statement, "the numbers will continue to climb. All of these beneficiaries will see savings on their drug costs that were not available in previous years."

The agency also released a state-by-state breakdown of the numbers, showing that California saw the greatest benefit, with 54,586 seniors saving almost $30 million.

The Partnership for Medicaid launches a new ad campaign to resist healthcare entitlement cuts in the debt-ceiling negotiations.

Almost half of women with advanced breast cancer don't receive radiation treatment, says a new study released by the National Cancer Institute.

Generic drugmakers applaud the Supreme Court's decision to hear the case of Caraco Pharm. Labs Ttd. v. Novo Nordisk A/S.

The Government Accountability Office draws lessons from the H1N1 influenza pandemic.

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) says an Obama administration plan to have "mystery shoppers" try to make doctor's appointments amounts to government spying.

The New York Times reports on the high cost of new prostate cancer drugs.

Advocacy groups are launching campaigns aimed at saving Medicaid from the budget ax.

More than 100 groups representing doctors said Monday that an agreement on the U.S. debt ceiling should include a permanent fix to the formula that Medicare uses to pay doctors.

Republican negotiators have poured cold water on the idea of using the debt-ceiling vote to tackle the "sustainable growth rate" formula (SGR). But the American Medical Association and other doctors groups say the two go hand-in-hand.

The SGR has become a perennial headache for doctors and Congress alike. The formula calls for a payment cut of nearly 30 percent in January 2012 — when the latest temporary fix is set to expire. Congress consistently blocks scheduled cuts from taking effect, and has to come up with new offsets each time.

According to the AMA, a permanent SGR repeal would have cost $48 billion in 2005 — compared with a price tag of nearly $300 billion to block the cuts that are scheduled for January.

"An agreement on the debt ceiling legislation provides the best — and perhaps only — opportunity to ensure stability in Medicare payments, ensure continued beneficiary access to care, and address the SGR deficit in a fiscally responsible manner," the AMA and other organizations said Monday in a letter to President Obama.

The letter was signed by 112 medical groups.

Planned Parenthood is asking a federal court to block Kansas from cutting off its federal funding, after winning a similar injunction Friday in Indiana.

Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri filed a lawsuit Monday that seeks to prevent Kansas from implementing a provision of the state budget that would cut off federal funding.

According to the group's brief, Kansas blocked federal money from going to organizations that specialize in family planning without also providing primary and preventive care. The provision would cut off funding to all Planned Parenthood clinics, even those that do not provide abortions, the group says.

A federal judge on Friday granted Planned Parenthood's request for an injunction to stop the state of Indiana from enforcing a law designed to cut off Planned Parenthood's federal funding in that state.