A rumor circulating online in August 2024 claimed U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris once said she desired to "snatch" up patents so that the U.S. government could take them over.
The rumor spread on X in an 18-second video clip showing Harris speaking to voters on C-SPAN in Muscatine, Iowa, on Nov. 22, 2019. At the time, Harris — then a U.S. senator from California — was campaigning for the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential nomination.
In the brief video clip posted (archived) by an X user on Aug. 16, Harris said, "I will snatch their patent, so that we will take over." Looking toward the crowd, she continued, "And yes, we can do that. Yes. Yes, we can do that. Yes, we can do that. The question is, do you have the will to do it? I have the will to do it." That X post received millions of views and tens of thousands of reposts and likes.
As Mediaite reported in its own article about this rumor, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was among the thousands of users to repost the clip, captioning his post (archived) with, "Well, this is crazy."
It's true Harris said the words, "I will snatch their patent, so that we will take over." However, the 18-second video clip users shared omitted some context from her remarks.
The longer video hosted by C-SPAN showed Harris was speaking about patents for prescription drugs, specifically for drugs created by pharmaceutical companies that had received federal funding and, in the future, would refuse to lower consumers' costs to equal amounts charged in other countries. (The bolded words below indicate the only part of Harris' comments included in the brief video clip users shared on X.)
My plan as a candidate for president on the issue of drug prices is as follows: We are going to set drug prices based on fair market. So, essentially what we're going to do, and, you know, visit the website if you will, and if not, I can get you some documents. But, essentially what we're going to do is set drug prices so that American consumers are charged a price for drugs that is the average price that's being charged around the globe. [applause] And you're gonna… 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 medication, was born out of federal funding for the research and development of that drug. Your taxpayer dollars. So, for any drug where they failed to play by our rules, and if that drug came about because of federal funding for what's called 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, do you have the will to do it? I have the will to do it.
Nearly five years after Harris made these remarks, The Associated Press reported on Aug. 15, 2024, that American taxpayers were expected to save billions of dollars after President Joe Biden's administration "inked deals with pharmaceutical companies to knock down the lists prices for 10 of Medicare's costliest drugs." Those drugs include Januvia, Jardiance, Xarelto, Entresto and others. The reporting also added, "But how much older Americans can expect to save when they fill a prescription at their local pharmacy remains unclear, since the list cost isn't the final price people pay."
Further, the Biden-Harris administration's Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 also lowered the cost of insulin for seniors on Medicare.