Survey: People Believe Government Should Make Health Care Priority

Bratislava, December 21 (TASR) - The health-care sector is the area that the government should make its priority, both coalition and opposition voters concurred in December's 'How Are You, Slovakia?' survey. The respondents who stated that health care should be the government's main focus also voiced their dissatisfaction with the things that the government is focusing on instead. The respondents were supposed to pick two priority spheres out of ten that they believe the government should deal with most urgently. More than 60 percent chose the health-care sector. "Significantly lagging behind were fields such as 'measures to ameliorate the impacts of inflation' (33.2 percent) and 'decreasing Slovakia's debt' (27.1 percent)," stated the survey. The view that health care should be the cabinet's top priority was voiced by 60 percent of Smer-SD voters, 65 percent of Voice-SD voters and 69 percent of Progressive Slovakia voters. "This view was espoused more often by older respondents and those with a university education," reads the text. Among those who believe that the government should make the health-care sector a priority, 81.1 percent are unhappy with the areas on which the cabinet has been focusing instead. A total of 53.9 percent of the respondents believe that the Slovak health-care sector is in worse shape than it used to be ten years ago, while only 9 percent believe otherwise. Organised by Seesame agency in cooperation with the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV), the survey was conducted in December 2-6 on a sample of 1,000 respondents. mf/df/am