Cypriots in the present study gave priority to patients with unhealthy lifestyle as opposed to those with healthy lifestyle, irrespective of age, gender and educational level. A possible explanation is that respondents considered people with an unhealthy lifestyle to be in greater need for medical treatment. Another plausible interpretation is that unhealthy lifestyle is highly associated with risk factors such as smoking, obesity and physical inactivity. Considering that Cyprus ranks high in tobacco consumption between EU countries as well as in physical inactivity and obesity, one may assume that a large proportion of the participants had one or more risk factors and this might have affected their decision-making. Irrespective of these assumptions, this finding may suggest that people of low socio-economic status and poor health should have priority due to social inequalities in health. It seems that participants’ responses were based on the principle of necessity or at least we can pertain that these findings can be partially explained on the grounds of this principle.