Objectives: This article analyzes the content and outcome of ongoing health reforms
in Latin America: Universal Health Coverage with Health Insurance, and the Universal
and Public Health Systems. It aims to compare and contrast the conceptual framework
and practice of each and verify their concrete results regarding the guarantee of the
right to health and access to required services. It identifies a direct relationship
between the development model and the type of reform. The neoclassical-neoliberal
model has succeeded in converting health into a field of privatized profits, but has
failed to guarantee the right to health and access to services, which has discredited
the governments. The reform of the progressive governments has succeeded in expanding
access to services and ensuring the right to health, but faces difficulties and
tensions related to the permanence of a powerful, private, industrial-insurance
medical complex and persistence of the ideologies about medicalized 'good medicine'.
Based on these findings, some strategies to strengthen unique and supportive public
health systems are proposed.