Acesso à saúde pública no Brasil: uma questão de limites

Abstract

This research aimed to demonstrate the need to set a cost-effectiveness threshold for access to health. Health was discussed as a fundamental right, but not an absolute one due to the existence of limits that must be built considering the essentiality of the right and the scarcity of resources. For this purpose, the history of the creation of the SUS and its systemic conception was addressed, as well as the need for these to be respected as limits. The issues of the cost of the right to health and the scarcity of available resources was addressed to highlight the need for a cost-effectiveness threshold in Brazil. The themes were approached from the theoretical references of Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein to demonstrate that fundamental rights, including health, always demand positive actions from the State and, consequently, involve costs that can’t be ignored. The research is conducted at the interface between human rights and legal economics. As a methodological process, documental research related to data and bibliographic research is used. The study allowed the interpretation that there are historical, systemic and economic limits to access to health. Finally, there are a need to define an cost effectiveness threshold in the SUS.