With Vice President Kamala Harris now the presumptive Democratic nominee, critical questions have been raised about what her views and potential policies would be on certain healthcare-related issues if she were to be elected as president.

Harris' beliefs and ideas about healthcare and medicine reportedly stem in large part from the work of her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who conducted groundbreaking research on cancer but ultimately succumbed to a form of the disease, according to Stat News.

Gopalan earned fame as a "prominent" researcher on breast cancer, though she eventually died in 2009 from colon cancer.

Harris' mother studied cancer

Stat News reported that Gopalan's early research on breast cancer at the University of California in Berkeley resulted in breakthrough discoveries of a link between hormones and cell growth in breast tissue, which earned her an appointment by then-President Bill Clinton to his administration's Special Commission on Breast Cancer.

Gopalan also collaborated on research with the National Institutes of Health while working at the Jewish General Hospital in Canada, where she studied links between certain proteins and hormones and the growth of malignant tissues.

She then worked for a time as a peer reviewer of other cancer research for the NIH before returning to Berkeley to continue her own studies for the remainder of her career.

Mother's research influenced her views

In her 2019 memoir, "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey," VP Harris wrote, "I remember how proud my mother was to work with the NIH as a peer reviewer and collaborator with other experts in her field," and asserted, "If we want our children to have cures for humanity’s most terrible diseases, we should invest in our national medical researchers, instead of relying on companies that would rather funnel money to their shareholders."

Harris also separately addressed her mother's cancer diagnosis in a 2018 op-ed, and said of her thoughts at that time, "I remember thanking God she had Medicare. I believe that health care should be a right, but the reality is that it is still a privilege in this country. We need that to change."

Stat News noted that more recently, during a 2022 event promoting the work of President Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot program that aims to boost cancer research with federal funding, Harris referenced her mother's work and said, "When President Biden launched his Cancer Moonshot five years ago, I, of course, thought of my mother. We may not have ended cancer as we know it -- not then, but there is still so much work to do and we are so much closer."

Harris' progressive leftist healthcare plans

ABC News reported this week that if VP Harris were to be elected as president, she would likely continue many of the same policies as President Biden has pushed, if not move even further to the progressive left on some important issues.

One major example would be the Affordable Care Act, which she has supported protecting under Biden but would likely seek to expand into a single-payer, Medicare for All type of program -- an idea she signed on with in 2019 that, by necessity, would obliterate private health insurance.

Harris has also been a loudly outspoken advocate for abortion rights and, as president, would likely seek to protect and expand access to abortions at the federal level and impose her will on states that have significantly restricted or outlawed the deadly procedures for unborn babies.

The VP has also been a big proponent of Biden's efforts to lower prescription drug costs, not through incentivizing innovations but by imposing government-mandated pricing that would stifle new research and result in scarcity.

Thus, a Harris presidency would likely destroy any remnants of the free market system in the nation's healthcare industry and replace it with government mandates and regulations that limit peoples' options.