Republican mistrust in healthcare widens US health gap, study finds

[srobin21]

Republican mistrust in healthcare widens US health gap, study finds

 

Republicans increasingly avoid doctors and vaccines, widening health gaps with Democrats, researchers say

 

By Hannah Harris Green – The Guardian - Fri 29 May 2026 09.00 EDT

 

Growing Republican mistrust in the healthcare system has widened health disparities between liberals and conservatives, who are more likely to avoid vaccines and the medical system in general, according to a new study.

 

Neil O’Brian, a political science professor at the University of Carolina, Chapel Hill and one of the authors of the study published in Nature Human Behaviour, said that his team saw two phases to the phenomenon.

 

“Part one is this gap starts to emerge in the 2010s, and it seems like it’s a byproduct of education polarization,” O’Brian explained, “Folks without a college degree move to the right. Folks with a college degree move to the left. That happens for a variety of reasons. Education is a pretty strong predictor of health.”

 

The second phase began during the Covid-19 pandemic, when social determinants of health, including education, could no longer explain the expanding gap in health outcomes.

 

“This is a real puzzle,” O’Brian said. “We turn to the survey data and show that people on the right are less likely to trust, engage, or use medicines to treat chronic illness relative to the left.”

 

Full at:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/29/republican-healthcare-trust

 

 

 

[srobin21]

Is it mistrust of medicine or an inability to afford it? Seems to me that education polarization is the best explanation as those with post secondary education or professional credentials are more likely to have higher income than others and, in this country, having health care is often a function of income.

 

 

SR