A União e o fenômeno da judicialização da saúde: uma análise empírica dos possíveis impactos nas políticas públicas de saúde.

Abstract

The present work aims to evaluate possible impacts and relations between the phenomenon of health judicialization in Brazil and the public policies directed to population health itself. The research question is: does the many judicial decisions, about public health against the Federal Government, have any effect on public health policies? If so, are these effects positive or negative? Based on a large part of the literature, we assume the hypothesis that the health judicialization negatively impacts public policies directed to health in Brazil. In order to measure the possible impacts on that policies, the work uses, as a dependent variable, nine public health indicators related, directly or indirectly, to the supply of medicines and the accomplishment of surgical procedures. On the other hand, the independent variables used as proxy of health judicialization are: the absolute number of lawsuits that succeeded against the Federal Government; the absolute amount spent over the years with the judicial payments borne by the Federal Government; the per capita value per state spent on the lawsuits by the Federal Government; and the ratio between the Federal Government´s unfavorable lawsuits for each 100.000 inhabitants from the states where the lawsuits started. The inferential model is the multivariate linear regression and the period is from the year of 2012 to 2015, having as analysis unit the aggregated data by unit of the federation where the lawsuits started. The results obtained rejects the hypothesis that health judicialization in Brazil, at least in the scope of the Federal Government, is excessive to the point to impact negatively on public health policies. On the other hand, some indicators show to be positively impacted by the Judiciary Power activity during the analyzed period.