Public opinion on health care and public health

Abstract

In the health policy literature, scholars and practitioners distinguish broadly between health care and public health interventions. Both types of policies are indispensable to deal with pressing health problems. Nevertheless, we know very little about how individuals support the principle logic behind these two approaches to health policy. In this paper, we analyze empirically whether individuals prefer either a health care-oriented or a public health-oriented approach to health policy. In addition, we explore political and socio-demographic factors explaining individuals’ choices. To conduct this analysis, we use multivariate regression analysis based on data (N=5442) from the 2018 wave of the Swiss Household Panel Survey. The survey contains high-quality data from a representative sample of the population living in Switzerland. Our results demonstrate that a majority of citizens prefers public health policies rather than policies ensuring access to health care. Especially, individuals with higher out-of-pocket payments in their health insurance plan support a public health over health care policy approach. Furthermore, those who prefer environmental protection over economic growth support public health over health care policy.

Keywords

• Medical health policy
• Environmental health policy
• Policy goals