In her new book, The Anatomy of Deception (Oxford University Press, 2024), one of us (Sara) argues that restricted access to high-quality healthcare in the U.S. destroys trust in traditional medicine and leads people to default to alternative sources of care. Through interviews with people who express distrust of the traditional healthcare system, she provides evidence that when people have trouble obtaining the care they need, their reaction can be to believe anti-science attitudes and conspiracy theories about the healthcare system. Sometimes, this leads to tragic decisions in which people with serious health problems shun traditional medicine and develop life-threatening complications.

Now, a new study published in JAMA Network Open at the end of July finds that trust in physicians and hospitals declined substantially during the most severe period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Roy H. Perlis of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and colleagues used survey data from 582,634 adults residing in the U.S. to measure trust in physicians and hospitals between 2020 and 2024. They found that the proportion of people who said they had a lot of trust in physicians and hospitals fell from 71.5 percent in 2020 to 40.1 percent in 2024. Decreased trust was associated with being 25 to 64 years of age, female gender, lower education level, lower income, Black race, and living in a rural area. Political affiliation was not associated with trust levels in this study.

Among the reasons........

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