O programa "SUS Mediado" em Natal/RN: uma estratégia de viabilização do direito à saúde ou um instrumento de individualização da demanda social?

Abstract

The Federal Constitution of 1988 determined health as the right of all and the duty of the State, as well as instituting the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), listing principles and guidelines that corroborate the effectiveness of this right. However, since 1990, with the advance of the neoliberal offensive, not only health but all social rights have been hit hard. The reduction of rights, the privatization of the public good, the scrapping of public policies, fiscal adjustment, attacks on democracy and the individualization of social demands are the main consequences of the process of counter-reform of the State, which Brazil is going through. In this scenario, the judicialization of public policies, in particular health, has become a growing phenomenon, generating the need for the creation of strategies, such as the "SUS Mediado" program, for intervention in this problem, acting in an extra-judicial manner for the access of the user to the completeness of assistance of the SUS. Thus, the present work aims to analyze the meaning of the action of the SUS Mediado program, in Natal/RN, as a strategy for the effective of rights or other individualizing mechanism of social demand, examining the situation of Health Policy in Brazil in contemporary times, evaluating the objectives and functioning of the program and verifying its impacts on the public sector and society. To do so, bibliographic, documentary, as well as qualitative and quantitative research was carried out. As a result, it is understood that the program does not have a collective character, since it acts from the individual provocation of the citizen, so that, for there to be a real strengthening of the SUS, it is necessary to have a radical change of the interests that govern the state management, and must prioritize the social above the market.