Schwarzenegger Will Address Drug Costs, ‘Bread-and-Butter’ Issues in State of State; Editorials Address 2006 Legislative Priorities

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) in his State of the State address on Thursday will address "bread-and butter issues," including prescription drug programs, the San Francisco Chronicle reports (Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/4).

Schwarzenegger on Tuesday sent a letter to congressional leaders calling for federal action to permit U.S. residents to reimport prescription drugs. Schwarzenegger administration officials said the governor would discuss the letter in his address on Thursday (California Healthline, 1/3).

According to the Chronicle, "the address will provide voters with their first look at the 2006 model of Arnold Schwarzenegger" after political strategists and other advisers recommended that the governor move to the political center (San Francisco Chronicle, 1/4).

Two recent editorials addressed priorities, including health care, for Schwarzenegger and the Legislature in 2006. Summaries appear below.

• Los Angeles Times: "Rising health care costs and the problem of California's 6.5 million uninsured people may become this year's big issue," a Times editorial states. Healthy Families -- "one of the few bright spots in California's troubled health care picture" - "fully deserves the governor's backing," according to the editorial. "Because Healthy Families has broad public support and federal funds cover two-thirds of its cost, it offers a lot of bang for the buck," the editorial concludes (Los Angeles Times, 1/4).
  
  
• Riverside Press-Enterprise: Citing state Medi-Cal expenses and hospital concerns about treating the uninsured, a Press-Enterprise editorial states that California "must find ways to make health coverage more readily available and devise more cost-efficient methods of treating poor patients" (Riverside Press-Enterprise, 1/3).