Inovação Política, Distributivismo e Crise: A Política de Saúde nos Anos 80 e 90

• Main Author: Costa Nilson do Rosário
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro 1996-01-01
• Series: Dados: Revista de Ciências Sociais
• Subjects: Health-care policy; distributivism
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0011-52581996000300007

The article assesses the organizational arrangements and innovations in Brazilian health-care policy that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s. The sector underwent important institutional shifts that threatened its entitlement status as a public policy. Health-care policy also created means of access to decision-making mechanisms and to sources of funds associated with distributive type governmental policies. This policy pattern favored decentralized, multi-centered decision-making arenas and satisfactory means of access to public funds at minimum costs for interest demands. This perception of health-care policy as entailing low fiscal and institutional costs account for the fact that sector actors (e.g., representatives of municipal interests) were extremely open to the policy innovations included on the agenda of the 1980s sanitation reform, such as decentralization and social control