The Brazilian national congress and the planning of human resources for health

Abstract

The Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988 has given the competende for the Brazilian National Public Health System (SUS) to order the training of the human resources for health. Until now, this clause has been not regulated. A bill on this subject was proposed to the Federal Senate on 1992, but it did not succeed. This paper discuss the difficulties of this regulation - specially the meaning of the term "to order" which, until then, did not exist in Brazilian laws and juridical dictionaries - and how the bill went through the parliamentary procedures and the debates it provoked in the two houses of the National Congress. Spite of the complexity of the subject, the appreciation of the bill was centered in the criteria that permit the opening of new medical and dentistry schools and if would harm the university independence or not.