The Unique Health System and the Workers 'Party: history and current challenges

Abstract

This article aims to present a brief history of the attention to health care in Brazil and the importance of the Sanitary Reform Movement in the period of redemocratization of the country in the 1980s, which played a fundamental role in the creation of the Unified Health System (SUS). This movement is seen as a tributary of much political articulation and social mobilization evidenced both at the 8th National Health Conference and the popular process which generated the Federal Constitution of 1988. This work is based on the bibliographic revision and documentary research, densifying information about the period researched by including information given by social actors that were filiated to the Workers Party and participated in this unique political moment that defined "health care as everyone's right and the state's duty to ensure it". Analyzing the results of this research shows the importance of defending universal access to health care, independent from the influence of the workers party, seeing the weakening of SUS in the present proposal of changing the current universal heath system to a universal coverage system. The difference in the key terms "health system" and "coverage system" may seem small at first glance, but the latter brings with it the interests of private entities that prioritize their profit above even life, causing great setbacks as to seeing health as a human right, which should be structuring the economic and social development and therefore the right to quality of life.