Conservatives are dying at higher rates than liberals. A new study points to mistrust in medicine

Your politics could be making you ill, and conservatives are dying at significantly higher rates than liberals, according to a recent study in Nature. Over the past decade, a health gap has emerged in the United States. While extensive research has examined how factors like income and education shape health outcomes, political ideology has largely been overlooked—until now. A paper published last month analyzed individual health data from a long-term study of a large, representative sample of Americans across all 50 states. “2010 is the last year in which we can say fairly clearly that there is not this gap,” Elizabeth Elder, a coauthor of the study, tells Fast Company. “By 2020 we have pretty clear evidence of a gap in which conservatives are less healthy than liberals.” By 2016, the gap had begun to appear in biomarker measures. By 2020, it was showing up in deaths from causes such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Since then, the gap has only widened. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2 of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34 of “very conservative” respondents. The authors argue in the study that the divide cannot be explained away by COVID-19 deaths, demographic differences, geography, or the simple fact that some groups are older than others. Instead, they point to a widening ideological divide in trust toward doctors and the broader medical system. That crisis of trust accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, with fights over masks and vaccines spilling out from social media into everyday life. Now it extends to other health matters, such as taking blood pressure medication or seeing a doctor for chest pains. “We found that the gaps in trust and willingness to go to the doctor were no different for people with chronic health conditions than people without them,” Elder says. For younger, healthier people, she adds, that mistrust may not have immediate consequences. But for older people or those with chronic health conditions, that mistrust could become a matter of life and death. Since the gap emerged in 2020, health in the U.S. has become increasingly politicized. Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. assumed the role of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump, federal health policy has been reshaped by the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. RFK Jr.’s antivaccination agenda has gained ground as more red states work to eliminate vaccine mandates, while MAHA and MAHA-adjacent wellness influencers have cast doubt on everything from sunscreen to chemotherapy. Nearly three out of four U.S. adults say the country’s medical system fails them in some way, according to a 2023 survey from the American Academy of Physician Associates. MAHA stalwarts have capitalized on that frustration to push an antiscience and antiestablishment political agenda. The health gap predates the MAHA movement, which gained traction in late 2024. But according to Elder, it is plausible that MAHA has contributed to the broadening skepticism toward medicine beyond the COVID-19 pandemic—and that it could help sustain the widening divide in health outcomes between conservatives and liberals. While the study does not establish causation, the shift is clear: “What we can say is that health outcomes were not correlated with politics as of 2010,” Elder says. “And they are correlated with politics now.”