Right-wing Americans have worse health outcomes

But it’s more complicated than you might think, given that the disparity started to show only fairly recently.

“Public health disparities provide an important lens for understanding social and political change in the USA,” a recent study in the journal Nature concludes. “Using individual-level medical data and death records, this study shows that conservative Americans experienced worsening health and higher mortality than liberals during the 2010s.”

…Liberals and conservatives had roughly equal health outcomes as recently as the early 2010s. But by the mid-to-late 2010s, researchers saw a “substantial” divide emerge with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and strokes. COVID didn’t create the phenomenon. It just made it impossible to ignore…

The authors identify two possible causes for the recent disparity. First, less healthy people have increasingly found their way into the conservative side of the aisle. That makes sense, given how the right responded when former first lady Michelle Obama suggested that maybe children should eat a vegetable now and then. You’ll pry their Arby’s from their cold, dead hands. Literally.

But that’s only half the story. The other half is even more disturbing: Conservative politics itself may now be a health risk.

The authors frame political belief as a possible “social determinant of health,” alongside things like income, education, geography, and access to care. In plain English: Your politics may now help predict whether you get treated, whether you listen to your doctor, whether you trust medicine, and ultimately whether you live longer. - Daily Kos