Amid Olympic Détente, Pence Snubs North Koreans In Visit To Pyeongchang
Kim Yong Nam, top left, president of the Presidium of North Korean Parliament, and Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, top right, sit behind U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, bottom left, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, bottom right, as they watch the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Patrick Semansky/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Patrick Semansky/AP
Vice President Mike Pence is facing backlash for his staunch efforts to ignore North Korean officials at the Winter Olympic Games, even as the two Koreas continued their temporary truce, marching and competing as one team.
Pence’s cold demeanor toward the North Koreans at the Pyeongchang games was overshadowed by friendly cooperation between the North and South. The vice president also drew criticism from some openly gay members of Team USA, who questioned his role at the Olympics due to his anti-LGBT views.
Pence continued his tough rhetoric even after South Korean officials announced North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had invited President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang for talks. He insisted on Saturday that the U.S., South Korea and Japan were united in their goal of isolating North Korea over the country’s nuclear weapons program.
“There is no daylight between the United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan on the need to continue to isolate North Korea economically and diplomatically until they abandon their nuclear and ballistic missile program,” Pence told reporters aboard a flight back to the U.S.
In the days leading up to the Olympics, Pence warned that the North was trying to “hijack the message and imagery” of the event with a propaganda campaign, according to Reuters.
Prior to the opening ceremony on Friday night, Pence arrived late to a dinner reception between the two Koreas and greeted everyone at a main table except for Kim Yong Nam, North Korea’s nominal head of state, Reuters reports. He left the reception five minutes later.
“South Korea has some difficult homework to solve regarding some countries,” President Moon said in a speech before Pence arrived. “There are some who would not want to be in the same room together if it wasn’t for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. But what is more important than anything is that we are together.”
In a rare public moment, President Moon shook hands with Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of Kim Jong Un, at start of the opening ceremony. Pence, who was seated just a few feet away from Kim, did not appear acknowledge her. Then when the Korean team entered the stadium under a unified flag, Pence sat stone-faced while Moon and North Korean officials stood together in applause.
A senior White House official said Pence was not trying to avoid the delegation from North Korea but rather ignore them, according to the AP. Asia experts said Pence’s sour conduct toward the North Koreans could be seen as disrespectful to the South Korean hosts, who were demonstrating a moment of harmony with the North.
“The grievances that the world has about North Korea are very legitimate,” Frank Jannuzi, an expert on East Asia at the Mansfield Foundation told the AP. “But the Olympic moment that President Moon is trying to generate here is not a time to nurse those grievances. It’s a time to focus on messages of reconciliation and peace.”
The vice president’s visit was also marked by bad blood between Pence and some U.S. athletes. Openly gay American freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy took a swipe at Pence in an Instagram post, posing with fellow openly gay figure skater Adam Rippon.
“I feel incredibly honored to be here in Korea competing for the US and I’m so proud to be representing the LGBTQ community alongside this amazing guy! Eat your heart out, Pence,” Kenworthy wrote.
In January, Rippon criticized Pence’s role in the Olympics, citing the widespread belief that the vice president supports gay conversation therapy. In an appearance on Ellen earlier this month, Kenworthy called out Pence, saying he has “directly attacked the LGBT community.”
What The Budget Deal Means For Medicare Drug Prices
The new budget will likely lower the cost of expensive prescription drugs for Medicare patients. Elisabeth Rosenthal of Kaiser Health News talks with NPR’s Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The new budget passed late this week includes changes for Medicare patients. It will require drug companies to give deeper discounts to Medicare on expensive prescriptions. That should reduce the cost of drugs for patients. The skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs is something followed closely by Elisabeth Rosenthal, a veteran healthcare reporter and editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News, who joins us from her offices. Thanks so much for being with us.
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Will this and other features you see in the budget help reduce the cost of prescription drugs?
ROSENTHAL: Well, to a small number of people, it will. I mean, this really targets the Medicare-age population and Medicare plans. And for people who have very high drug costs within Medicare, it will definitely help them. But it, of course, doesn’t solve the much larger problem of the very high prescription drug prices that everyone pays in this country. And P.S., what we’re talking about for Medicare patients, even, are discounts on these very high initial prices. So, you know, a discount of a really high price still isn’t a very good deal.
SIMON: Why do we have a problem with this in the United States?
ROSENTHAL: Well, we’re the only country that doesn’t in some way directly negotiate prescription drug prices with manufacturers – the only developed country, that is. I mean, most other countries in some form either evaluate the cost-benefit ratio of a new drug and decide what they’re willing to pay or, you know, very aggressively negotiate with drug manufacturers, particularly for older drugs, as they age.
SIMON: Insulin in one form or another has been saving lives for – what? – 80 years.
ROSENTHAL: Yeah.
SIMON: Why has the price gone up in recent years?
ROSENTHAL: Prices will rise to whatever the market will bear, right? We see that uniquely in the U.S. One vial of insulin in the U.S. costs seven times what it does in Germany. So there’s a huge disparity there. Some of the reasons have to do with reformulations of insulin that are, in fact, better than some of the older ones. Although, when I’m talking about that 1 in 7 price comparison, that’s the same exact insulin.
In the U.S., what’s happened – and this is something that I know the Trump administration is looking at and many experts in the field have decried – the slow arrival of biosimilars or generic insulins onto the market, which are on the market in other countries. The problem in this country is the lowering of prices of insulin. And insulin patents have been held up in the courts for years now in suits and countersuits between the three big insulin drug makers, including by Eli Lilly, which is the former employer of our new HHS Secretary.
SIMON: That’s Alex Azar – has been appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services.
ROSENTHAL: Yes.
SIMON: Is he the kind of choice that gives you optimism that prescription drug prices will come down?
ROSENTHAL: Well, there’s a certain argument to be made that Alex Azar of all people on Earth understands how the games are played and how these suits and countersuits about making generics or making biosimilars have held up the arrival on the U.S. market and have raised prices for everyone. On the other hand, there’s ongoing concern about the revolving door between government and pharmaceutical companies such that you wonder, is their loyalty to the American people, or is their loyalty to the pharmaceutical world from which they came?
SIMON: I don’t think I can think of any politician who says, and if you elect me, I promise prescription drugs will cost more.
ROSENTHAL: (Laughter).
SIMON: I mean, on the contrary, every politician says, elect me, and I’ll do something to bring down the cost of prescription drugs. Why doesn’t that get done?
ROSENTHAL: Yeah. Everyone agrees that our prescription drug costs are too high – both right and left – you know, Democrat, Republican. It’s one of the few points of information, points of fact that everyone agrees on. The problem is everyone disagrees on how best to tackle that. And there are a lot of forces that are resisting any change at all.
The bipartisan solution which Senator Klobuchar and Senator John McCain have proposed is allowing prescription drug imports from other countries, so we allow for a global competition in the sense of, you know, if everyone else is getting a better deal than us, why can’t we buy our prescription drugs from there the same way we buy our, you know, refrigerators and cars?
SIMON: Elisabeth Rosenthal, editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News and author of “An American Sickness: How Health Care Became Big Business And How You Can Take It Back.” Thanks so much for being with us.
ROSENTHAL: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE JAZZ MANDOLIN PROJECT’S “SPIDERS”)
Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
