Your doctor’s politics matter to your treatment.

According to a new study out of Yale and published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the advice you get from your doctor can depend on whether the doctor likes donkeys or elephants more.  You can view the whole study (for pay) here or the abstract (for free) here. The study asked 20,000 doctors from 29 states to analyze nine different “vignettes,” only three of which involved “especially politicized” issues (marijuana use, abortion, and firearm storage in the home).  The political leanings of the doctors predicted their rating of the seriousness of the issue and their proposed course of treatment.  The political differences were not associated with differences in the non-politicized vignettes.

So, if you have a politically charged health question, you may want to figure out your doctor’s politics.

(Image above a screenshot from The Sacramento Bee)