Editorial
Health care issues in Croatian elections 2005-2009: series of public opinion surveys
Dagmar Radin
; Department of Political Science and Public Administration Mississippi State University Mississippi State, Miss, USA
Aleksandar Džakula
; Andrija Štampar School of Public Health School of Medicine University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Vanesa Benković
; Croatian Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Health Economics, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Aim To compare the results of a series of public opinion
surveys on experiences with the health care sector in
Croatia conducted in the time of elections and to analyze
whether political party affiliation had any influence on issues
of priority ranking.
Methods The surveys were conducted during 2005, 2007,
and 2009. They were administered through a Computer
Assisted Telephone Interviewing method to representative
samples of Croatian population and were statistically
weighted according to sex, age, level of education, and political
party affiliation. The random sampling of the person
within the household was done using the table of random
numbers.
Results Health and health care system was the most important
issue (58%) during the 2007 parliamentary election
and the second most important issue during the 2005
and 2009 elections (46% and 28%). In the 2007 election,
health care was viewed as most important by women, respondents
with lower education levels, and respondents
with lower income. In 2005, the most important health
care issues were corruption and lack of funding (45% and
43%, respectively), in 2007 poor organization and lack of
funding (43% and 42%, respectively), and in 2009 lack of
funding and corruption (51% and 45%, respectively).
Conclusion Health and health care system were consistently
among the top two issues in all elections from 2005
to 2009. The top three most important health care sector
issues were corruption, poor organization, and lack of
funding. This indicates that political parties should include
solutions to these issues in their health care policymaking.
Keywords
Health care system; voting; health planning; Croatia; public opinion; elections
Hrčak ID:
74212
URI
Publication date:
15.10.2011.
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