On the deontology of government interventionism in the health sector

Abstract

The attitude adopted to problems in the health sector is based on principles which arise from the doctrine of utilitarian philosophy which imposes a perspective of individualization incapable of providing structural solutions. The process which defines the mercantilization, the corporative system, the preventive and educative action in public health and both basic scientific investigation as well as that applied in Medicine is described insuch a way as to characterize some of the causes and the effects of this perspective. By means of the inter-connected analysis of the problems of health assistance, of education and of cultural, scientific and economic development, the tendency to resist the movement to replace this perspective and the consequence inertia of the evolution of the health sector is discussed By this analysis it is also to be seen that the utilitarian principles produce the inverse effect to that desired by the political guide-lines adopted, that is to say, when they make the health sector inefficient, they then become a threat to the social order which it wishes to maintain. Thus it is concluded that the demands of the institutional concentration of health actions, of the technical division of labor and of the development of adequate technologies of process, can be integrated into present political practice on the basis of this understanding.