title: Importance of health care issues in 2005 presidential elections in Croatia.
abstract: Health and health care provision are among the most important and politically sensitive public service areas. Politicians carefully incorporate health care program changes in their political agendas to gain votes. However, knowing health care priorities of the electoral body is not useful only to politicians, but also to health policy makers, as it enables them to target the most problematic areas in health care. We conducted a telephone survey of representative sample of voters (n=643) immediately before the presidential elections in Croatia in 2005, to determine the possible differences in health care priorities between left-wing and right-wing voters, and found a high level of homogeneity in their opinions. Health care organization, corruption, and financing issues were identified as the top priorities by both left- and right-wing voters. This agreement in voters' expectations, probably caused by a similar frame of mind of Croatian citizens inherited from pre-democratic times of self-government, could be used by health policy makers to rationally invest the means and efforts in dealing with the most problematic health care issues.
authors.affiliation: 1Department of Social Medicine and Health Care Organization, Andrija Stampar School of Public Health, Medical School, University of Zagreb, Croatia. adzakula@snz.hr
authors.forename: Aleksandar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dzakula
authors.forename: Ozren
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Polasek
authors.forename: Zvonko
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Sosic
authors.forename: Luka
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Voncina
authors.forename: Gordana
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pavleković
authors.forename: Ognjen
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Brborović
mesh_terms: D017523:Croatia; D006292:Health Priorities; D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics