Patterns and changes in the financing and regulation of Brazilian Health System: impacts on public and private relationships

Abstract

This article systematizes the interpretative matrixes used in the debate about the Brazilian Unified Health System and formulates hypothesis about the extensive and dynamic frontiers of the public-private intersections that characterize it. Considering the gap between the health system concepts based on pure models and reality, where hybrid forms predominate in health services organization, constituting a permanent focus of tensions, the study highlights: the use of public financing sources for the demand and the offer of health plans; the afflux of clients from private health plans to the public health systems physical infra-structure and human capacity; the public-private insertion of health professionals and the permission that administrators of private enterprises occupy public administrative jobs and vice-versa. The consequences of the structure and forms of articulation between public and private in the agenda of the most important forum of debates and the formulation of directives for the Unified Health System, The Health Conferences, and government institutions directly related to SUS are analyzed. The author's conclusion is that the tensions, conflicts and propositions about the public component of the Health System are directed to specific arenas. In parallel other negotiation arenas about the private component were constituted and renewed. Thus, the segmented demands reflect, automatically, in the different sectors, in the definition of special agendas or in the public or in the private.