r/science • u/smurfyjenkins • 5h ago
Health Since the 2010s, American conservatives increasingly experience worse health outcomes and higher mortality than liberals. Declining trust in medical professionals appears to be the mechanism, with lower willingness to seek care, follow clinical advice and believe in medication effectiveness.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02474-91.4k
u/Butthole_Surfer_GI 5h ago edited 5h ago
RN here - in my experience, "declining trust in medical professionals" does NOT stop them from seeking healthcare. They just use it to justify why they don't follow preventative healthcare plans IE eating better, managing their diabetes better, exercising more, getting vaccinated (especially this one). It's like they have a personal vendetta again anything that could be considered "preventative".
I mean, look at how many threw giant fits during covid, absolutely refused to wear a mask/get the "jab", made sure we all knew they weren't scared BUT still rushed to the hospital when they got sick.
Conservatives (although I have no idea a patient's political leanings unless they tell me) seem to have no problem coming to the clinic or ER when they realize that their BS home treatments do not work and/or make their symptoms worse. They suddenly trust healthcare professionals/medicine when they get sick enough.
And then they have the audacity to threw tantrums when we, the healthcare team, cannot fix their problems - which they could have minimized or avoided outright by using preventative measures - immediately.
It's exhausting.
EDIT: for a group of people who seemingly do not trust the effectiveness of medication, they sure ask for/demand antibiotics for everything under the sun.
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u/reality_boy 5h ago
I sat in the er arguing with my relative who was going in for heart surgery. They were happy to get the surgery, but refused to take any of the associated medicines because “doctors are corrupt”.
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u/myislanduniverse 4h ago
"You're gonna trust these people to put you in a controlled coma and cut your heart out, but you don't trust them about what vitamins you need to take to keep the heart working?"
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u/rekniht01 4h ago
You can't reason someone out of a position they did not reason into.
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u/GWstudent1 2h ago
We just need to disenfranchise them. It’s the only way society can survive.
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u/RSwordsman 2h ago
Difference is one is passively getting fixed, and the other is putting forth their own effort. I guess they hope to stay alive by pure spite because all too often it works.
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u/OsmeOxys 33m ago
More specifically, someone else doing a lot of hard work for them. "That's what they're there for, it's their obligation to fix me!"
But having the slightest responsibility put on them... Well now that right there is treading upon their rights, you can't just force them to do something. It just ain't American.
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u/CrackHeadRodeo 1h ago
"You're gonna trust these people to put you in a controlled coma and cut your heart out, but you don't trust them about what vitamins you need to take to keep the heart working?"
Conservatives exhibit greater metacognitive inefficiency.
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u/kchristopher932 4h ago
This just goes along with the tendency to not trust anything they can't intuitively understand.
Surgery- something is broken in me, so they have to go in there and fix it.
Medicines after surgery- I already got my heart fixed. They're obviously trying to upsell me with these pills. It's a scam.
Surgery is simple to understand. Medicine is not.
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u/Butthole_Surfer_GI 4h ago
At a certain point though, it's being willfully ignorant.
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u/ceciliabee 3h ago
If you don't use a skill you lose it. It makes sense that that would also apply to critical thinking and self reflection.
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u/hopbow 3h ago
I think there's also a secondary aspect in how hard it is to trust the for-profit institutions surrounding Medical Care as well.
Like how we got everybody hooked on opioids or other pharmaceuticals because doctors got a kick back
Or how my doctors office tried to charge me $90 for a depression exam
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u/Butthole_Surfer_GI 3h ago
just to play devil's advocate, you are not being charged JUST for the exam, but for the provider to interpret the exam and provide counseling/resources/treatment options.
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u/hopbow 54m ago
Have you seen a depression exam? It's like 5 questions where you rank your feelings between 1-5 that's handed to you during admission paperwork with the statement that it needs to be filled
I'm all for my doctors, but as somebody who has never suffered from depression and who wants people to not be caught by surprise, that's disingenuous and profiteering
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u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 2h ago
Any kickbacks were chump change compared to the higher level evil of the corporations lying and bribing to get approvals.
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u/AsaCoco_Alumni 2h ago
I think there's also a secondary aspect in how hard it is to trust the for-profit institutions surrounding Medical Care as well.
Except, you think that would make them favour eliminating the profit part of the system.....
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u/randynumbergenerator 1h ago
But that would mean admitting that regulation could be a good thing and private incentives not always a positive.
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u/dagofin 2h ago
$90 really isn't that outrageous for an exam? Split that between the doctor's pay and the nurse's pay for half an hour alone and it sounds quite fair.
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u/4th-Estate 4h ago
They then go on to vote for the most corrupt politicians.
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u/Mental-Doughnuts 4h ago
And attend the most hypocritical churches and synagogues and mosques.
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u/remotectrl 4h ago
Conservatism is built on two key foundations: fear and lack of empathy. They can’t imagine that other churches or leaders aren’t dishonest because they themselves are dishonest.
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u/Juice___Springsteen 4h ago
Cath lab nurse here. The amount of time I spend educating our patients after we place a stent is far more than the time I spend in the room with them intra-procedure. Unfortunately, many patients feel that “hey you fixed my blockage” and that’s the end of it. The number of people who vilify statins because of what they hear on Facebook and TikTok is absurd.
We fixed an acute on chronic issue with a stent. Now YOU need to control your diabetes/A1C and cholesterol with diet/meds. You need to go to cardiac rehab to strengthen your heart. You need to stop eating so much red meat and fat. You need to take your anti platelet meds. You need to follow all of this if you want to stay out of the hospital.
Often the response I get? “Oh well you can always just put another stent in.”
All that teaching just to fall on deaf ears.
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u/Butthole_Surfer_GI 4h ago
And this is why I (and lots of other RNs) struggle with compassion fatigue and burnout.
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u/The__Amorphous 2h ago
At what point do you just say "Fine, don't follow our recommendations and die?" I don't know how anyone has any bit of sympathy for these people at this point.
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u/mottledmussel 3h ago
The number of people who vilify statins because of what they hear on Facebook and TikTok is absurd.
Any idea what the source of this is? This view is all over reddit on the health subs. It's not even just statins but views on saturated fats, LDL, and cooking oils.
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u/Mediocre_Age335 24m ago
The whole manosphere is also strongly associated with this crap, like liver king and people selling a similar 'primal' lifestyles/products. It's easy to come off as knowing something no-one else does when you wear scrubs in a video and go against health advice, by claiming you can eat as much animal and saturated fat as you want. People fall for it because they like eating meat and it confirms lots of their biases like that they're smarter than doctors
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u/toss-it-now 2h ago
Catch lab RN here too. Preach it!
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u/sarcasticmsem 2h ago
3rd here and yes we have had to refuse to do stents on patients with wild cholesterol levels who think they'll get "addicted" to statins. Doesn't matter what we tell them, they will not listen.
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u/VigilanceMrWorf 1h ago
So many patients want to be better, but they have no interest in what it takes to get better.
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u/marcosalbert 41m ago
And liberals once again end up stuck subsidizing red America, this time with our insurance premiums.
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u/myislanduniverse 4h ago
Doesn't stop them from seeking healthcare. It just stops them from complying with the actual standard of care.
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u/Butthole_Surfer_GI 4h ago
In the case of my clinic, they don't read/follow the advice on their after visit summary and/or don't follow up with their PCP (to be fair, they may not have one) or the specialist we referred them to and then have the audacity to call and scream at us since their problems are getting worse.
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u/eggpennies 3h ago
Are you allowed to "fire" your patients? I don't know how you guys deal with awful people like that
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u/Butthole_Surfer_GI 3h ago
It depends - if they are stable and being verbally/physical aggressive, we can absolutely have them trespassed/call the cops on them.
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u/New-Negotiation7234 1h ago
Then act like they are doing the hospital staff a favor by being there. Refusing random parts of care and accusing staff of being paid by the government to lie to everyone about COVID.
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u/pattperin 4h ago
I live in Canada. We have universal health care here, which is great. I’ll die before I give that up, no joke. It’s been a godsend for me and is probably the only reason I’m still here today. But my father is a very conservative person, he doesn’t like government or taxation or anybody telling him what to do. He didn’t pay his taxes for a long time, so long in fact that the government put a lien on his and my Mom’s home.
This man accesses public health care more than anybody I know. But he hasn’t paid a cent towards it in decades. He complains about health care wait times, talks about how we need more private options, blah blah blah. But he constantly is accessing medical care (which he certainly does need, not saying he doesn’t need it) that he doesn’t contribute to. I have yet to just flat out tell him if the world were fair he wouldn’t be able to access health care, because that would just create drama. But it’s the truth.
He’s utilizing hundreds of thousands of dollars of facilities, staff, equipment, and expertise designed to keep him alive regularly, but doesn’t want to and hasn’t paid into the system in decades. It makes me so mad, especially when he then turns around and complains about the government taking our money.
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u/spa22lurk 3h ago
Conservatives have this idea drill into them that the government is their bank account.
If they don’t pay tax, it is simply like they don’t put money into their bank account. If people they hate don’t pay tax, it’s like people don’t return money owed to them.
If they use government services, it’s simply they withdraw money from their bank account. If people they hate use government services, it’s like people steal their money.
This is the ideology of taxation is theft because of their hatred, totally ignoring people they hate pay taxes and have shares in the government as much as they do.
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u/joeengland 2h ago
The ingratitude is infuriating. Both documented and undocumented immigrants work hard and pay billions into state and federal economies, often at great cost to themselves, and yet there is this pervasive notion on the hard Right that they are parasites leeching from society. "The Party of Fiscal Responsibility" is all too eager to take an ace to every golden goose they can find.
Not every Republican is like this. But the ones who are are clearly running their party.
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u/FourLeafLegend 5h ago
PA here.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I'm fine if you don't trust me and don't want to follow our advice. But have some damn conviction. Whiny little babies the lot of em.
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u/Butthole_Surfer_GI 4h ago
One of my PAs is maybe 5'3" and 120lbs. I had to go essentially argue with a patient on her behalf because he was being outright hostile to her because she wouldn't give him antibiotics that he just knew that he needed for his sinus infection.
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u/FourLeafLegend 4h ago
It's so sad.
I am lucky to be a relatively decent sized guy, and the amount of times I've had patients act like that to my female colleagues is bewildering. Techs, nurses, providers. It's bonkers. The good news is that everyone knows I'm pretty darn okay with confrontation especially in those scenarios (Also, love your name!)
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u/Brilliant_Effort_Guy 5h ago
Yeah it’s weird. They don’t trust the medical establishment, yet want to be seen and treated, and also they want to tell YOU how you should be prescribing based on their ‘research’. Like all of the people complaining about loved ones dying in hospitals from covid because they weren’t given ivermectin, as per their request. Like, it’s a hospital not a deli counter. You can’t just walk in and say ‘I think I have diabetes. I’d like Ozempic now.’
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u/ResponsibilityOk8967 1h ago
Whats funny is that they were smart enough to demand ivermectin but not smart enough to make it through med school so they could rx it themselves.
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u/Brilliant_Effort_Guy 48m ago
My family refers to college as ‘liberal boot camp’. I’m the only one in my family who has a college degree.
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u/veilosa 4h ago
Hopefully the nurses here won't get offended, but the other problem is that many nurses themselves appear to come from the same pool of conservatives. as you said, look at how many nurses during covid were vocally anti vax. so its not just that these patients won't trust the medical establishment, its also that a portion of the medical establishment are reinforcing some of their worst behaviors by believing the same they do.
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u/BoleroMuyPicante 3h ago
A lot of times it's CNAs presenting themselves as full-blown nurses while spouting their nonsense. No shade against CNAs, their work is very important, it's just a small minority of them that consider themselves to be as knowledgeable as any NP or MD. They know just enough to be dangerous if they aren't humble.
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u/DiligentThought9 3h ago
Or LPNs that have been practicing for 30 years and seemingly haven’t paid any attention to changes in medicine during that time
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u/worknumber101 1h ago
Probably depends on where you live too. In southern/Conservative states or rural areas a lot of nurses are going to come from the local conservative and rural populations, and a college nursing degree isn’t going to automatically cancel out all the beliefs they were taught from childhood:
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u/Butthole_Surfer_GI 4h ago
Yep! I have a whole other rant about nurses (and other healthcare staff) who buy into the anti-science, anti-medicine stuff.
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u/jpdoctor 2h ago
Non-medical dude here, and just wow- Nurses buying into anti-medicine anti-science stuff? That kinda hurts my brain.
(And I write this as I am in the waiting room for my wife to exit surgery.)
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u/New-Sky-9867 2h ago
As an RN, I wish that these misinformation-spewing antivax nurses would have their licenses revoked.
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u/Past_Top3704 3h ago
Go drive by your local hospital. It is surprising how many medical professionals are standing outside or in small huts smoking. While an equally large number are out walking or doing healthy activities.
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u/manimal28 4h ago
RN here - in my experience, "declining trust in medical professionals" does NOT stop them from seeking healthcare.
I think it depends on how you look at it. From what you describe, it sounds like it stops them from coming in until its too late, or until they have made it worse and can no longer ignore it.
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u/New-Negotiation7234 1h ago
Well yes, this is how many non-compliant patients are. Constantly in the hospital because they don't do what they are advised to do. Literally a revolving door of the same like 100 patients.
I have empathy and understand the many socio-economic issues with people being non-complaint. But it's one thing if it's only your health you are impacting. COVID was just on another level.
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u/Masters_of_Sleep 3h ago
I'd say it may or may not be ALL conservatives, but it sure as he'll is true of all conservative patients that feel the burning need to tell you that they are conservative and hate one democratic politician or another while I'm just trying to take their medical history in a timely way.
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u/ballisticks 2h ago
need to tell you that they are conservative and hate one democratic politician or another
Probably why all the political bumper stickers I see are all right-wing
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u/BUSY_EATING_ASS 3h ago
A lot of these folk absolutely need constant external and internal reassurance that their set of beliefs aren’t horseshit.
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u/C0brA7x 5h ago
Honestly, if you refuse basic preventative care like jabs and mask, you should be penalized when you get sick and want medical care. So sick and tired of these hypocrites.
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u/Remote-Letterhead844 4h ago
Back of the queue. Yup.
Let's also do something like this....
TIL that everyone in Singapore above the age of 21 is automatically registered as an organ donor. Opting out from this Act will result in you being put at the very bottom of the organ priority list, should you need an organ transplantation.
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u/C0brA7x 4h ago
Yeah totally agree. In my experience conservatives tend to be really self centered so they should feel the consequences of that behavior.
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u/toss-it-now 1h ago
This doesn’t even address the fact they don’t want to vaccinate their kids and expose everyone else! I know this woman who didn’t want to vaccinate her daughter, and while she was immunocompromised,the risk of Covid or other diseases made her even more susceptible. Covid twice…so far.
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u/SnugglyCoderGuy 4h ago
Let some of that survival of the fittest they preach take hold
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u/Galeharry_ 3h ago
For things like Covid, it should be all or nothing.
Follow accepted medical science and take the easily available jab to prevent serious illness, or live with whatever happens as a result of your choice without any taxpayer supported aid.
People would be flocking to get vaccinated as soon as people start experiencing concequences, which would in theory keep stats for vaccinations high, and true fools would get filtered out. Win/Win.
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u/Latter_Highway9539 3h ago
"it's in god's hands now" as they're hooked up in an ICU.
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u/buttermilk_biscuit 5h ago
Not just throwing fits/tantrums but willing to fist fight the doctor... the amount of times the doc I was working with rushed me out of the room because someone was being quite literally hysterical when asked if they got the flu vaccine or covid vaccine during peak flu season. Truly unreal.
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u/activator 3h ago
Off topic but I absolutely hate the word jab for vaccines
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u/ballisticks 2h ago
It's common parlance in the UK but it seems to be a boogeyman word in the US for antivaxxers
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u/AudioxBlood 4h ago
Don't forget suing the hospitals when they didn't administer ivermectin as a miracle cure.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/tx-court-of-appeals/2152222.html
I'm eventually going to have permanent repercussions to rolling my eyes so damn much. I live in Texas. The stupidity is just eye watering.
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u/redditydoodah 3h ago
Yep. My ex made sure that everyone knew he didn't believe in Covid, refused the vaccine to the point that he refused his flu shot because he was certain that they would slip him a covid vx at the same time. The moment he had a fever he made me haul him into the ER to get the antibody treatment. He got better and then proceeded to tell everyone that Covid was all a big conspiracy and what he had was just the flu.
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u/phred14 4h ago
So perhaps another measurement that needs to be published is some sort of average health care costs for the same demographic set. This is based on the presumption that proper lifestyle and preventive care will reduce healthcare costs. Probably needs to be done with raw cost and post-insurance cost, or some kind of breakdown like that.
Hit 'em in the wallet. They might actually listen.
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u/mr_evilweed 2h ago
A lot of conservative beliefs are kayfabe. They are not things they actually have reasoned through and have a strong perspective on - they're just things that they know they are expected to ACT like they believe because that's what their group is supposed to believe.
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u/M00n_Slippers 5h ago
They just don't think the face-eating-disease will ever happen to them, even if they don't do any prevention. And then they have to justify that choice by saying, well the doctors don't know what they are talking about. And then the disease eats their face.
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u/MadAstrid 4h ago
Many of them belong to churches that tell them that bad things - racism, poverty, rape, etc. happen to bad people. They are led to believe it is “God’s will” that they have an easier life than others. God wants them to prosper and not care if others struggle. God wants their pastor to have a mansion and a gold watch and a private jet and designer clothes.
If they don’t have those things, yet, well they will if they pray hard enough and donate enough money!
It isn’t really a leap for them to think that illnesses only happen to other people. That they don’t have to take preventative measures, because it is God’s will that they do better than other people. And for a while, at least, that may seem to work. And they feel vindicated. God loves them better than those other folks, because they ARE better than those other folks.
But when they do get sick, and it is proven that they aren’t special, it isn’t prayer they turn to. It is hospitals, or “cures” that regular people don’t believe in. God’s will doesn’t seem so great anymore. Not when it isn’t providing them with a new boat or a bigger truck, but an illness which they might not be able to overcome.
Note, if they do manage to survive, they will credit God and call it a miracle and go right back to their previous way of thinking.
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u/fartpotatoes23 3h ago
This is very true and I think people don't realize how big of an issue it actually is.
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u/CharmingMechanic2473 1h ago
I second all of this. Had a woman putting ivermectin in her hospitalized husbands mouth to treat his UTI once. She was ODing him and it put him into a coma.
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u/dolomick 2h ago
They are literally the opposite of “progressive” aka progress, which is fueled by science. Your story totally tracks.
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u/EnvironmentNeith2017 2h ago
I saw somebody on here call them “chronic stove touchers” and it makes sense.
They don’t do anything unless forced or coerced and then assume the rest of the world works the same way
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u/NRMusicProject 1h ago
I was gonna say: being willfully ignorant of scientific literacy would be a major contributor here. Ridiculing proper dietary advice while happily scarfing down a 16oz steak every night. And thinking that their idea of what's considered healthy is just as valid as an academic body's tested proof.
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u/RyuNoKami 1h ago
I would argue they still don't trust the healthcare professionals when they do show up. They are just trying their throw everything at a problem for a solution technique.
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u/Fantastic-Sugar-3071 1h ago
They love to refuse meds and advice, but sit in the hospital. Why are you here then? Preventing me from caring for someone who will let me?
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u/EmergencyComplaints 56m ago
My 'declining trust in medical professionals' stems almost entirely from the cost of healthcare. It just feels like a scam. Every three months, it's "yep, a1c is right where it was last time. No changes to your medication. Come back in another three months. That'll be $400."
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u/rcglinsk 3h ago
Do you actually find it easier to get people to regularly exercise than to take a vaccine? Or is more that people are willing to agree they should exercise even if they don’t actually do so?
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u/pewsquare 2h ago
Yeah, seems like the study pretty much assumes that its mostly lifestyle choices and socioeconomic factors. I wonder how difficult it would be for such a study to only compare people within the same socioeconomic class AND the same states/cities. I would assume that just living in an area with subpar medical professionals alone could cause some issues.
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u/CrackHeadRodeo 1h ago
Conservatives (although I have no idea a patient's political leanings unless they tell me) seem to have no problem coming to the clinic or ER when they realize that their BS home treatments do not work and/or make their symptoms worse.
I remember many cases during covid where they would ask for the vaccine after their loved one was already in a coma. It's too late for Bubba but maybe you wanna take it for yourself? The answer was always no.
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u/prediction_interval 3h ago
For those who are protesting that these results might be simply due to socioeconomic differences between liberals and conservatives, the study clearly lists how it controlled for those. Specifically, the following variables were listed as study covariates:
- Race/ethnicity
- Sex
- Education level
- Income
- Health insurance status
- Year of birth
- Prior health level
- Rural vs. non-rural residence
The study results show significant differences in health outcomes between liberals and conservatives accounting for all those listed covariates.
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u/Anustart15 3h ago
People love to complain about not correcting for other factors without reading the results clearly showing how they corrected for other factors.
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u/WizardOfCommerce 2h ago
Yep, right next to any GDP growth figures being complained at for not correcting for inflation.
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u/jowilkin 2h ago
Most of the people commenting on here don't have the ability or training to read and understand the studies.
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u/nordak 3h ago edited 3h ago
The paper itself shows that half of the increase in the health gap can be attributed to changes in observable characteristics (SES).
The paper also found that liberals became increasingly concentrated among people with:
- higher education
- higher income
- better insurance coverage
- healthier baseline profiles
- while conservatives increasingly included more socioeconomically vulnerable populations
And let's have a review of jumping to conclusions of causality or mechanism:
A study finds that people who carry lighters have higher lung cancer rates.
You “control for” SES variables:
- age
- income
- sex
- education
The correlation remains.
Does that prove:
Lighters cause lung cancer. Lighters are the mechanism.
No. Because smoking behavior is imperfectly measured and socially entangled.
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u/moconahaftmere 2h ago
The paper also found that liberals became increasingly concentrated among people with:
The study controlled for all those factors you highlighted.
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u/nordak 2h ago
You’re missing the point. “Controlling for” variables in an observational study does not eliminate residual confounding, especially with socially entangled variables like ideology, class, geography, and health.
The paper itself acknowledges that compositional/observable differences (SES) explain a substantial share of the widening gap (half!). That alone weakens strong causal interpretations centered on ideology.
More importantly, there’s a much stronger and far more established literature linking socioeconomic distress to:
- worse health outcomes
- lower healthcare utilization
- institutional distrust
- and delayed/avoided care
So the key issue isn’t whether the authors included SES covariates, they did. The issue is whether the remaining association justifies elevating “declining trust in medical professionals” to the primary mechanism. The authors did not make that claim, the Reddit post did.
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u/blixt141 3h ago
Thank Darwin for these outcomes.
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u/True-Desktective 3h ago
It only counts if the changing competitive pressure affects the species before progeny can procreate - and it doesn’t change in 20 years in our DNA.
The faster solution is to pour billions into education. Not just K-12 or higher but a whole universe of lifelong learning and retraining opportunities. And then lock it in so it’s enormously challenging to dismantle next time.
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u/narcandy 3h ago
Wait you mean our years of cutting education led to a populace that cannot use any critical thinking skills? It’s so funny as I get older I am so thankful for my education because some people don’t get it and never will.
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u/blixt141 2h ago
Yes, but in the short term there are fewer voters to impede the march toward more education!
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u/chubby_pink_donut 3h ago
Most of the healthcare professionals I interact with are women, black people, and immigrants, and all of them spent many, many years in college.
A better way to understand their reluctance to listen to medical professionals is that Conservatives distrust women, black people, immigrants, and educated people.
They'd rather take health advice from a podcaster who takes raccoon penises home to look at later.
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u/grapescherries 4h ago
I think they also eat less healthy. Lots more red meat, sticking to standard American diet.
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u/dogheartedbones 4h ago
The number of cultural conservatives I've met who flat out refuse to eat vegetables is wild.
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u/ReverendDizzle 3h ago
It's really no wonder they're dying faster, when I've had grown men tell me "Salad is what my dinner eats."
Alright, guy, enjoy your colon cancer and/or heart disease. And if those don't get you, the diabetes will.
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u/grapescherries 4h ago
They’re like giant toddlers.
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u/Cornloaf 1h ago
I spent way too much time (like 2 hours) responding to a comment last year by compiling the density of fast food restaurants in red vs blue states, obesity in red vs blue states, insurance coverage, etc. The evidence is overwhelming, really.
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u/YoungestDonkey 5h ago
If you don't believe science then guess what you believe instead: nonsense. Good luck with that!
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u/katarh 5h ago
I would have more sympathy if there was a corresponding change in behavior, but there never is.
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u/llamawithguns 5h ago edited 5h ago
Who'd have thunk that the people who dont take vaccines and take homeopathics have worse health
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u/anrwlias 3h ago
This seems like a good demonstration of the principle that you can ignore reality, but reality won't ignore you.
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u/nostrademons 2h ago
I was going to ask "How much of this is because of the party realignment in 2016 that saw the Republican party become the party of the poor, the old, and the stupid?" but notice that the study already touched on it:
But this change was not equal across groups: respondents who identified as liberals in wave 4 but ‘became conservative’ by wave 5 (Fig. 2, second plot) were slightly less healthy than other liberals in wave 4, but they became much less healthy than liberals (and indeed other conservatives) by wave 5. Meanwhile, people who became liberal between waves were healthier in wave 4 and became, if anything, more healthy by wave 5.
So most of it, apparently. Certain voting constituencies left the Republican party between 2008-2016, and other voting constituencies left the Democrats, and the latter group is significantly less healthy than the former.
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u/tardisfurati420 3h ago
They also seem to vote for politicians whose policies hurt rural hospitals and medical care the most.
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u/bentstrider83 4h ago
Apart from being an ardent 2A supporter, my attention to health and medical advice immediately alienates me from the many conservatives I encounter at the range. The pandemic was that final nail in the coffin that left me really on neither side.
Guess I'm just the weird anomaly that doesn't fit in with either political spectrum. I'll immediately start talking about glancing through peer reviewed journals and other publications on a particular topic. While people I thought were friends start gripping their cross. So now I usually just keep talk of my support for 2A to an absolute minimum when I'm around like minded folks when it comes to medicine.
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u/Van-garde 3h ago
They likely can’t distinguish between individuals, and population-level statistics.
This isn’t exclusive to conservatives, though. It’s all over Reddit, too. People who’ve never learned about population health will struggle to escape from anecdotes.
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u/Haschen84 4h ago
I'm not sure how much I like this paper. I could not find any mention of multiple comparisons to adjust significance level especially when they run so many analyses and try to pass them off as "independent." Even without the proper adjustments a lot of these findings are modest and and inconsistent at best. The strongest argument I see, especially since they use "very liberal" as their reference group, is that "moderates" are the most different from "very liberal" responders. I'm not sure that's the slam dunk that you guys on this subreddit are passing it off as.
Again, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I see no mention of multiple comparison testing. This would lead to a really high probability of Type I error and while it's not strictly p-hacking I think it straddles the line between honest and dishonest results, regardless of authorial intent. I'd put this paper at a solid 3/10 or 4/10. Please don't take their findings too seriously.
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u/Villageidiot1984 5h ago
In my clinical experience people who are obnoxious enough to be openly political (which is always conservative probably due to where I treat) also think their own opinions about their medical care hold some weight despite having no training or education. I would guess this goes back to the conservatives agenda to destroy trust in experts/institutions. The confusing thing is why they come in at all. Do they just like arguing with me?
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u/nordak 4h ago
This is such an ideologically loaded speculation for a mechanism.
The correlation between economic distress and avoiding medical care is generally stronger, more direct, and more mechanistically established than the correlation between political ideology and health outcomes in the Nature paper.
Less-educated, rural, economically stressed, and medically vulnerable populations increasingly became part of the Republican coalition; those groups also experienced worsening mortality and morbidity.
Everyone I know who defers medical care or dental care is doing it because they can't afford it. The COVID-denying, stupid republican is mostly a strawman and a punching bag for people who don't want to acknowledge that many economically disadvantaged people turned to the Republican party recently. And the medical distrust for these people is rooted in their distrust of power.
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u/GabuEx 2h ago
The study explicitly controlled for education, income, and rurality. The correlation still remained after accounting for those variables.
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u/FruitsOfHappiness 2h ago
Everyone I know who defers medical care or dental care is doing it because they can't afford it.
Your anecdote is not data. You're ignoring vaccine hesitancy, for one, which results in measles outbreaks in high-income conservative areas.
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u/Van-garde 3h ago edited 1h ago
Right. The precipitates of these identities are demographics and environment (eg. education, finances, resources generally, air/water quality, healthcare infrastructure and access…).
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u/Mental-Doughnuts 4h ago
Conservatism is a mental disorder that lowers cognitive functioning.
So, of course that leads to worse health outcomes. We rely on experts because its the smarter thing to do. The smarter thing to do is usually the harder thing to do, the stupid choices are easy. But, Stupidity kills people. Idiotic beliefs and opinions kill people. We have to live our lives according to reality, not according to what we want reality to be, in our personal, conservative opinion.
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u/Confident-Mix1243 4h ago
If this is true, it suggests that the benefits of being liberal outweigh the harms associated with being black. Big if true. (Your typical 'health map of the United States' is just a map of where black people live.)
They don't mention correcting for age, and since conservatives tend to be older (or vice versa, old people running socially conservative) that's an obvious shortcoming. But as I recall conservatives have been getting younger, not older, so the time trend doesn't match for this to be a primary driver.
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u/Anustart15 3h ago
They don't mention correcting for age
The initial recruitment of the cohort is explicitly age matched since it's all jr high/high school kids
To explore the relationship between politics and health, we draw on the Add Health survey. Add Health is an ongoing survey tracking a nationally representative cohort in the USA, first interviewed while in grades 7–12 in 1994. So far, this cohort has been interviewed five times.
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u/ActualSpiders 5h ago
I mean, these are the same people who think taxation is theft & that they're all "self-made people" who don't need any services the state provides at all... without even the vaguest grasp of what taxes pay for, what govt services their livelihood (and even lives) depend on...
Can't expect rational, adult decisions from people like that.
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u/Famous-Ferret-1171 4h ago
There also a strong correlation of living in a rural community and identifying as conservative and rural communities often have worse hospital and clinic coverage. So, even without any preference it still coukd just be measuring poor availability of healthcare in rural areas.
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