Brazil is a country of continental dimensions with widespread regional and social inequalities. In this report, we examine the historical development and components of the Brazilian health system, focusing on the reform process during the past 40 years, including the creation of the Unified Health System. A defining characteristic of the contemporary health sector reform in Brazil is that it was driven by civil society rather than by governments, political parties, or international organisations. The advent of the Unified Health System increased access to health care for a substantial proportion of the Brazilian population, at a time when the system was becoming increasingly privatised. Much is still to be done if universal health care is to be achieved. Over the past 20 years, there have been other advances, including investments in human resources, science and technology, and primary care, and a substantial decentralisation process, widespread social participation, and growing public awareness of a right to health care. If the Brazilian health system is to overcome the challenges with which it is presently faced, strengthened political support is needed so that financing can be restructured and the roles of both the public and private sector can be redefined.

Brazil is a large complex country that is undergoing rapid economic, social, and environmental change. In this Series of six articles, we have reported important improvements in health status and life expectancy, which can be ascribed largely to progress in social determinants of health and to implementation of a comprehensive national health system with strong social participation. Many challenges remain, however. Socioeconomic and regional disparities are still unacceptably large, refl ecting the fact that much progress is still needed to improve basic living conditions for a large proportion of the population. New health problems arise as a result of urbanisation and social and environmental change, and some old health issues remain unabated. Administration of a complex, decentralised public-health system, in which a large share of services is contracted out to the private sector, together with many private insurance providers, inevitably causes confl ict and contradiction. The challenge is ultimately political, and we conclude with a call for action that requires continuous engagement by Brazilian society as a whole in securing the right to health for all Brazilian people.

Este trabalho examina interfaces pública-privadas do mercado de planos e seguros no Brasil, procurando questionar as relações de autonomia e dependência das empresas de assistência médica suplementar com o SUS e alguns dos pressupostos que orientam o processo de regulação governamental. A análise desse mercado se apóia em referenciais extraídos da literatura e sobre informações provenientes de fontes oficiais, empresas de consultoria, dados de empresas de planos e seguros e depoimentos de seus dirigentes. Sugere-se a necessidade de ampliar a agenda de debates e pesquisas sobre o mosaico público-privado que estrutura o sistema de saúde brasileiro.

This article describes changes in the public, nonprofit, and private components of the health care networks and health insurance and health plan companies in Brazil, based on the accumulated knowledge concerning the gains and obstacles in the Brazilian Unified National Health System (SUS) and differences between policies for democratization and democratizing processes. This central premise allowed analyzing praise versus criticism for the SUS and the contemporary nature of relations between the public and private sectors, drawing on secondary data from agencies in the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary branches. The article concludes that the highly financialized private and private-charitable sectors imposed anti-democratic and anti-democratizing standards in the use of public funds. The article further concludes that although these sectors have not raised barriers to certain public policies for the expansion of access, they nevertheless prevent the development of the SUS according to the principles set out in the 1988 Constitution.

Tomando como fio condutor um conjunto de tendências de mudanças no cenário das relações entre o público e o privado, o trabalho analisa os efeitos do aumento das taxas de retorno consignadas pelas empresas de planos de saúde em 2007, detendo-se especialmente nos efeitos da segmentação das demandas sobre a naturalização das iniqüidades de acesso aos serviços de saúde e desvirtuamento de conceitos originais do SUS. Nutre-se também de informações sobre a produção de conhecimentos sobre a assistência suplementar para sistematizar os fundamentos e abordagens metodológicas adotadas por um subconjunto selecionado de trabalhos científicos. Por fim, são tecidas conjecturas e hipóteses sobre as possíveis associações entre o crescimento/estabilidade do mercado de planos e seguros de saúde e a natureza da produção científica sobre o tema, considerando as contradições entre o circuito econômico-político no qual se inscrevem as empresas de planos e seguros de saúde e a universalidade do sistema de saúde brasileiro.

Este artigo apresenta uma investigação preliminar da presença da seleção adversa e do risco moral (moral hazard) na demanda ativa por planos de saúde no Brasil, a partir dos dados da PNAD/98. O presente estudo compara indivíduos cujas coberturas decorrem do vínculo de trabalho, com aqueles cujos planos resultam de uma demanda individual às empresas que os comercializam e os que não têm acesso a esquemas assistenciais alternativos ao SUS. A elaboração de uma tipologia de planos de saúde, combinada com variáveis relacionadas com as condições de saúde, utilização de serviços e gastos com saúde, sugere a existência de falhas de mercado. A percepção de uma condição de saúde mais desfavorável parece estar associada à busca de cobertura e o tipo de cobertura com o maior uso de serviços de saúde. Quando analisadas através de dois modelos de regressão logística com múltiplos controles, onde a variável de desfecho é indicadora de seleção adversa ou moral hazard, essas diferenças se atenuam, com exceção dos gastos com saúde. Os resultados não evidenciam uma inquestionável assimetria de informações, mas sinalizam a necessidade de aprofundar o conhecimento sobre as relações entre morbidade, utilização de serviços de saúde, gastos com saúde e tipo de cobertura.

Objective:To systematically review the use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in observational studies. Methods: This study is a systematic review of articles that use the ICF in observational studies. We took into account the observational design papers available in databases such as PubMed, Lilacs and SciELO, published in English and Portuguese from January 2001 to June 2011. We excluded those in which the samples did not comprise individuals, those about children and adolescents, and qualitative methodology articles. After reading the abstracts of 265 identified articles, 65 met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 18 were excluded. The STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) adapted Checklist, with 15 items needed for observational studies, was applied to the 47 remaining articles. Any paper that met 12 of these criteria was included in this systematic review. Results: 29 articles were reviewed. Regarding the ICF application methodology, the checklist was used in 31% of the articles, the core set in 31% and the ICF categories in 31%. In the remaining 7%, it was not possible to define the applied methodology. In most papers (41%), qualifiers were used in their original format. As far as the area of knowledge is concerned, most of the studies were related to Rheumatology (24%) and Orthopedics (21%). Regarding the study design, 83% of the articles used cross-sectional studies. Conclusion: Results indicate a wide scientific production related to ICF over the past 10 years. Different areas of knowledge are involved in the debate on the improvement of information on morbidity. However, there are only a few quantitative epidemiological studies involving the use of ICF. Future studies are needed to improve data related to functioning and disability.

The Brazilian health system between norms and facts: mitigated universalization and subsidized stratification O sistema de saúde brasileiro entre normas e fatos: universalização mitigada e estratificação subsidiada