• Jarlsburg@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    In my anecdotal experience, people tend to engage with conspiracies either out of entertainment or a need to project order on a chaotic environment. The former really isn’t applicable to healthcare, but the latter very much is.

    Simply accessing healthcare in the US is stressful and time consuming on top of the prohibitive cost. Additionally, receiving care can be painful, traumatic, and confusing. All of these negative emotions paired with low health literacy creates an environment ripe fabricating easy to comprehend theories about how healthcare works as a way to alleviate the confusion and thus bring comfort.

    I think the current state of US healthcare, insofar as it creates the negative experience for patients, increases the attractiveness of conspiratorial ideas. However, my experience as a provider is that there is plenty of complexity and hardship surrounding providing care even if you remove all of the economic aspects. I’ve had patients who were fabulously wealthy with plenty of relevant education fall victim to fallacies because they are an attractive alternative to an uncomfortable truth.