OBJECTIVES: The issue of the introduction of co-payments is a great policy challenge in most of the Central-Eastern European countries. This is also the case in Hungary, where visit fee was introduced for health-care services in 2007, and abolished one year later as a result of a referendum. The aim of our study is to identify different types of attitudes towards patient payments, and answer why visit fee was so unpopular among Hungarian population. METHODS: 8 focus-group discussions with health care consumers and physicians and 7 in-depth interviews with policy makers were conducted in Hungary during the summer 2009 on the attitude of patient payments in health care. RESULTS: Based on the transcripts and questionnaires filled in by all respondents during the focus group discussions and interviews three different groups of attitude were identified. The group of “Supporters” support the introduction of patient payments with the aim of controlling the unnecessary use of services.  The group of “Undecided” concern patient payments as an opportunity to provide additional resource for health care system by paying for “extra-better-quality services”. “Sceptics” strongly refuse the idea of patient payments mainly referring to ethical issues. Consumers mainly belong to the group of “Undecided”, while one part of the physicians belongs to “Supporters”, the other part to “Sceptics”. Policy makers are all belong to the group of “Supporters”. CONCLUSIONS: Before the implementation of patient payments, mapping of population’s attitude is inevitable. In Hungary the failure of the introduction of visit fee can be explained by different expectations of health care consumers. They are not against to pay for health care services, but expecting better quality of provided services in return.