State Reform: health subordinated to market contracts?

Abstract

This is a discussion about the right to healthcare and its submission to the contractual agreements established between State and market in the process of administrative reform, in which the guidelines for the reconstruction of state functions have a direct impact on public healthcare policy. These guidelines are oriented by the diagnoses conducted by the international agencies in order to redefine the central principles of the Single Health System (SUS) based on cuts in financial resources. The proposals expressed in three of the principal documents prepared in the 1990’s as part of the discussion about reform of the sector are compared with the determinations of the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988. Even, a decade later, the debate and the indications in the field continue to reaffirm the importance and need for financial rationalization, focusing on care for specific population segments and the incoherence in establishing a system for social protection in healthcare with the principles and guidelines of SUS.