Public and private responsibility for health: a comparative analysis of attitudes towards financing and the right for health care.

The present study focuses on values that directly relate to issues of health care. It will observe specific patterns of health values and compare their distribution across selected social groups within and across four European nations. Studying these issues, new insights are expected into Eurpean welfare integrationa and diversification. First, two issues are explored of who shouls be called upon, when it comes to financing and to providing care and cure services. The second question is whetherfree health care should be a right for everybody or the responsibility of every individual. And third, people's attitude on private responsibility were examined with respect to higher financial burdens for thosewith health risk behavior. On each of these of these issues the primary interes is on intra-mation differentiation or convergence. To what degree will attitudes on these three issures of responsibility vary by demographic and strafification characteristics in each nation? Answers to the overall 15 sub-questions will provide us with a pricture of how the people in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, generally evaluate issues of responsibility for health care, specifically when it comes to matters of public versus private responsibility. (aut. ref.