MDAdvisor Fall 2022

SENATOR SINGLETON: Historically, the Senate Majority Whip has been instrumental in working with the Senate President and our Senator Majority Leader to ensure that our caucus is able to move forward on legislative pieces that we want to see advanced. In the Senate, it takes 21 votes to get something passed, and part of my responsibility is working with leadership to ensure that, at minimum, 20 of my colleagues are inclined to support an initiative that moves forward. That takes a lot of personal communication with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but more predominantly making sure that the Senate Democratic caucus is aligned with the policy objectives we’re trying to move forward.

ADUBATO: Senator, because I know you from when you were a leader in the organized labor movement, I know you have long been interested in public policy and public service. Where did the drive to run for an elected office in the legislature come from?

SENATOR SINGLETON: I think it does go back to my foundation in labor, which started both with my father, who was a union shop steward in a warehouse in Philadelphia where I grew up, and with my grandmother, who was also a shop steward as well as a block captain in Philadelphia. In that city, block captains and ward leaders are the frontlines of politics and public service as you try to pass initiatives in your community. I’d say that service from an organizing standpoint is in my blood. I wanted to be a part of that mechanism that can impact people’s lives in such a positive and profound way—and that is government. Government is designed to give people an opportunity to move forward to a better tomorrow. My decision to serve came into place for me, fundamentally, from the earliest onset of being around my dad, walking picket lines, and seeing how my grandmother organized people together. I realized that I could perform that role but take it to another level in government, where I can actually help shape public policy to make people’s lives better.

“Government is designed to give people an opportunity to move forward to a better tomorrow. I realized that I could perform that role but take it to another level, where I can actually help shape public policy to make people’s lives better.”

ADUBATO: It’s important that you share that perspective, Senator, as we transition to some key healthcare issues. You’ve been committed to dealing directly with the exorbitant costs of prescription drugs, not just in New Jersey but nationally. What exactly is the role of the State Legislature in New Jersey when someone might say, Those costs are market forces. It’s capitalism at its best or worst. What does the Legislature have to do with prescription drugs?

SENATOR SINGLETON: Medications don’t work if you can’t afford them, so I start from that fundamental premise. It is a well-known fact that Americans pay more for prescription drugs than anyone else in the world. From our perspective here in New Jersey, it is a hope that our representatives in Washington, DC, will address this issue nationally so that no one has to face that Hobson’s choice of whether to pay for medicine or pay the rent, or pay for food or car payments this month. Those are critical choices that people are making every day. Along with my colleagues in the New Jersey Legislature, I feel we can no longer sit idly by and wait for Washington to figure this out. So, we’ve put forth countless measures to drive that conversation forward. I firmly believe that states are policy incubators where many of the most forward thinking, progressive issues that have been tackled on the federal level were actually born. In New Jersey, we’ve been trying to press the issue of the high cost of medication so that Washington can take steps from our lead to put some downward pressure on price. This is so fundamental. Forget all the bills we work on and all that other things legislators do, people come into my office saying very simply, I can’t afford my medicine anymore, and I also can’t afford to go without it. Senator, what can you do to help me?  We’ve been aggressive in letting drug manufacturers know that although their products are wonderful, if no one can afford them, they’re not going to help anyone. Let’s not price people out of healthcare. Let’s not price people out of the opportunities to live the kind of lives that all of us want to live. We’ve been especially aggressive in trying to push this issue of consumer relief for insulin, inhalers and better price transparency into the prescription supply chain.

ADUBATO: What can you tell us about the role of pharmaceutical benefit management organizations, or PBMs?

SENATOR SINGLETON: PBMs do great work, but we want to make sure that they’re doing this great work in a way that benefits those who are paying for that, so we’re looking at creating a prescription drug affordability port. We want PBMs to know that in New Jersey, we’re willing to pay our share of the cost of prescription drugs, but we can’t have folks be so priced out of this dynamic that they can’t afford their medicine. All of the physicians I’ve talked to feel that way, too. They want their patients to get the medicine they need to move forward, but they also know that sometimes they can’t afford it. I can’t imagine what that feels like when a physician knows the pathway to giving someone good health, but bureaucracy and market forces are keeping those lifesaving drugs out of the hands of the people who need them the most. Frankly, I can’t sit idly by and allow that to happen while we wait for Washington to solve that problem.

ADUBATO: Moving on to another difficult topic: It’s no secret that those in the medical community are very focused on workplace violence. What is the role of the State Legislature in dealing with healthcare workplace violence?

SENATOR SINGLETON: For the past several years, I’ve spoken, and will continue to speak, about the need for respect and decency to prevail when it comes to talking to our friends and family about our political differences. That same notion should carry over to our civil interactions and most certainly to our healthcare professionals. For the last two-and-a-half-plus years, our nurses, doctors and other frontline healthcare professionals have been working through this COVID pandemic, often putting their own health at risk to be there in our time of need. Yet, with increasing frustration about the pandemic, people have felt it necessary to physically take those frustrations out on our healthcare heroes. It is unacceptable, and it’s something that we have to stop. These mounting tensions and hostilities have made their way into emergency rooms and doctors’ offices and hospitals. This is why I work with hospital leadership in the State of New Jersey and, along with my colleague Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald, send a clear message to our healthcare workers that we have their backs. We’ve created a proposal called Health Care Heroes Violence Prevention Act. Its goal is to raise awareness with prominent signage throughout our healthcare facilities that assaulting a healthcare worker is a crime. It adds penalties, including an anger management course and/or community service, for persons who assault healthcare workers. It also expands the aggravating factors a court may consider in sentencing someone who assaults a healthcare work in the line of duty. And finally, it creates a new disorderly persons offense for threatening a healthcare worker. Now, a disorderly persons offense in our state is punishable with up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000, or both. Two years, ago, our communities came together to support our healthcare workers – our heroes. Everywhere you saw it: We love our frontline workers lawn signs, free meals and kind notes and other gestures of support. It’s sad and deeply unfortunate that we, as a society, have gotten to a place now where we even need to introduce this legislation. I believe this proposal sends a clear message that our healthcare workers must be treated with respect, decency and the stability they deserve for the jobs they are doing.

ADUBATO: One more healthcare issue. Where do we stand at this time, in the fall of 2022, regarding COVID vaccines? What do you say to people with vaccine hesitancy?

SENATOR SINGLETON: When I became eligible to get my vaccine, I wanted to do it publicly because I wanted everyone, especially my fellow African Americans, to see that the COVID vaccine is safe and will protect all of us. The vaccines prevent us from having the most serious effects, including death, as our body fights this COVID disease that keeps morphing into different versions. As I continue to talk at churches and in community groups, especially in the African American community, to address this issue of vaccine hesitancy, there’s two things that always pop up. There’s always the conversation around how African Americans have been treated as it relates to healthcare in general, and, more specifically, the way they’ve been treated regarding vaccines; this goes back years and years.

ADUBATO: Let’s talk about Tuskegee. What were the Tuskegee experiments about and why do they matter today?

SENATOR SINGLETON: In the Tuskegee experiments, our government used African Americans as, basically, lab rats to develop a vaccine for syphilis. I continue to push back on that conversation because I want to focus on science and fact. Of course, we can’t entirely shy away from that conversation about the shameful history of how our medical community and our government has treated African Americans in the past. But we also must recognize that we’re not going to move forward in the fight against the COVID pandemic by relying on those anecdotes and on mistrust. Of course we need to address the ongoing health inequities that we know still exist by making sure we have more quality healthcare services within the reach of those in minority communities. That’s how we can combat vaccine hesitancy. And it falls upon us in government and us as a society to demand that everyone has equal access to the greatest healthcare system in the world without worrying that their color is darker, that they have a different hue, that their last name is different or that they have an accent. We have to make sure that we’re providing a roadmap for African Americans, and for all of us, to be able to achieve the healthy outcomes we want.

ADUBATO: Senator, in light of everything you’ve just said, how optimistic are you about New Jersey and America’s future?

SENATOR SINGLETON: I am incredibly optimistic. I do believe there’s a level of pragmatic thinking that we all must have, looking at what’s right in front of us. But aspirational politics, a government that appeals to the better angles of our character, those are always going to be the foundational tenets that guide me as a legislator and as a person. I want to be able to see that bigger and brighter day that moves us forward, and I still believe our best days as a country and as a state are ahead of us. We have so many talented people in this state who are working every day to make it better for all of us, regardless of one’s political leanings or ethnicity. We are all working together to try and move forward. That is what gives me hope. When I talk to some of the younger folks who are coming up behind me in the Legislature, I don’t get dismayed for the future; I actually get emboldened that that future is going to be brighter. We will move New Jersey and our country forward when we get back to believing that we as a people can grow together when we work together. I’m excited for that future.