The SUS ‘owners’

• Main Author: Paulo Henrique de Almeida Rodrigues
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Instituto de Comunicação e Informação Científica e Tecnológica em Saúde (Icict) da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz) 2016-12-01
• Series: RECIIS
• Subjects: Sistema Único de Saúde; financiamento da assistência à saúde; setor privado; setor de saúde suplementar; prestação de assistência à saúde.
• Online Access: https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/view/1227

This article deals with the dispute between the private health sector and the public unified health system of Brazil (Sistema Único de Saúde - SUS), which has been increasingly favouring the former. It addresses the relationships between the fiscal subsidy to the private health sector and the fact that health spending in Brazil is mostly private; the change in the tactics of private providers of health services that unlike the Reforma Sanitária Brasileira (Brazilian Health Reform) has led the SUS to use them to sell services to the public sector; the relations between the municipalization of the system and the guarantee of the purchase of private sector services; and the increasing privatization of the management of public health services through OSS - organizações sociais de saúde (social health organizations). The article tries to show how that dispute has been occurring in an unequal way, to the detriment of the SUS and the public interest.