Patient-Citizen-Consumers: Judicialization of Health and Metamorphosis of Biopolitics

Abstract

Situated at the meeting points of Law and Medicine, the "judicialization of the right to health" is a contested and hotly debated phenomenon in Brazil. While government officials and some scholars argue that it is driven by urban elites and private interests, and used primarily to access high-cost drugs, empirical evidence refute narratives depicting judicialization as a harbinger of inequity and an antagonist of the public health system. This article's quantitative and ethnographic analysis suggests, instead, that low- -income people are working through the available legal mechanisms to claim access to medical technologies and care, turning the Judiciary into a critical site of biopolitics from below. These patient-citizen-consumers are no longer waiting for medical technologies to trickle down, and judicialization has become a key instrument to hold the State accountable for workable infrastructures.

Uso racional de medicamentos, farmaceuticalização e usos do metilfenidato

“…According to Osório-de-Castro et al 25 there are some factors that encourage this practice: the great availability (in quantity or variety) of medicines considered essential or not; the attraction caused by therapeutic novelties 17 ; the powerful marketing strategies of the pharmaceutical industry; the supposedly inalienable right of the doctor to prescribe; and even cultural syncretism, which exposes medicines to uses never imagined by the professionals who originally developed them 20 .…”

Descolonizando a saúde planetária

“…Os paradigmas reinantes da farmaceuticalização e da privatização da saúde para os quais apontam meus trabalhos junto a pacientes psiquiátricos e pessoas vivendo com HIV/AIDS no Brasil (Biehl, 2007(Biehl, , 2008(Biehl, , 2013a(Biehl, , 2013b(Biehl, , 2016b(Biehl, , 2016c revelam-se totalmente inadequados para lidar com as muitas facetas de uma resposta à pandemia (Griner, 2020). As inadequações se evidenciam na logística de testagem, no rastreio de contatos, na falta de envolvimento de comunidades, bem como na dificuldade de aumentar a capacidade hospitalar para cuidados intensivos em todas as regiões do país.…”

The management (or lack thereof) of COVID-19 in Brazil: implications for human rights and public health

“…It is imperative to point out that neoliberal health policies have existed in Brazil for a while, whereas the Brazilian public health system has, perhaps, since its creation depended upon both public and private funding. Thus, while the Federal Government assumed a central role in public health-care funding with the Federal Constitution of 1988, decentralization and outsourcing of health-care responsibilities to the private sector has also been a reality (Biehl, 2016). In fact, the decrease in social spending and growing underinvestment in public health are a normal part of the neoliberal project (Ferraz, 2020).…”