Kamala Harris declares she will 'snatch' patents from drug companies if they don't do what she wants

This exchange may or may not have happened:

Democrats in Denial: Oh, come on, they're not THOSE kinds of socialists! You conservatives are such meanies!

Kamala Harris: Hold my beer.

In case America needed another reminder that the Democratic Party has fallen off the deep end, at a recent campaign appearance, presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said that she would strip drug companies of their patents if they refuse to do what she wants.

What did she say?

A video shared by the Daily Wire's Ryan Saavedra shows Harris speaking on stage at a campaign event in Iowa. After explaining how, if she were elected president, the federal government would set drug prices to average global prices for the medicines, she declares that she would seize the patents of pharmaceutical companies that refuse to comply with her demands.

Even Democratic primary voters were skeptical of her proposal and asked, "can we do that?" She responded, "Yes, we can do that! (....) I have the will to do it!"

Here is a transcript of Harris' remarks:

My plan, as a candidate for president, on these drug prices is as follows: We are going to set drug prices (...) at fair market. Essentially what we're going to do is set a price for drugs that's the average price being charged around the globe. And there's a huge difference, insulin being an example.

The other thing is this: if people don't want to cooperate with that, I'm also going to do the next thing, which is this: A lot of drugs, prescription medicate, was born out of the federal funding for the research and development of that drug. Your taxpayer dollars.

So for any drug where they fail to play by our rules, and if that drug came about from federal funding for R&D, research and development, I will snatch their patent. So, that we will take over. Yes, we can do that! Yes, yes, we can do that! Yes, we can do that. The question is whether you have the will to do it. I have the will to do it.

Readers of TheBlaze may recall that this is not the first time that Harris has proposed heavy-handed control of the health care industry. Earlier this year, she declared she would eliminate private insurance companies as president, before later retracting the statement.

'Creates shortages and stifles research'

Democrats have flirted with the idea of setting price controls on pharmaceutical drugs for years. However, these ideas have been regularly blasted by economists and health experts.

In 2017, Peter Pitts, the president and co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, wrote in National Review that "[d]rug-price controls might conceivably result in small, short-term savings, but ultimately they hurt patients by restricting access to medicines and preventing the creation of new, breakthrough treatments." Pitts also noted that price controls on drugs "creates shortages and stifles research."

Meanwhile, an October 2016 study from Citizens Against Government Waste dismissed the notion that there is presently little federal regulation of consumer drugs and argued price controls would hurt patients.

"U.S. pharmaceutical companies have been dealing for years with a variety of price control measures, such as Medicaid rebates and the 340B discount program, which were intensified under Obamacare. These price control measures, among others, have distorted the market, shifted costs, and stifled innovation," the study said.