[Health plans and insurance: financialization of companies and economic groups that control the private healthcare scheme in Brazil].

The article aims to describe the characteristics of financialization in a set of ten companies and economic groups operating health plans and insurance in Brazil from 2008 to 2016, selected according to their turnover and the size of their client portfolio. The financial/accounting and net worth dimensions were analyzed according to the balance sheets and cash flows, compared to microeconomic indicators of financialization and the records of changes in the shareholding structure filed with commercial boards. The authors analyzed the companies' policy positions based on primary data from semi-structured interviews with qualified representatives and the analysis of shareholder reports and news from the specialized media.

The dominance of finance in healthcare: political action of unlimited capital in the 21st century.

This article gives, first, a historical account of the action of capital in healthcare in contemporary Brazil and then introduces a debate on the dominance of finance ('financial dominance') in healthcare based on one case to examine: the hypertrophy of the structure for intermediation in private healthcare existing in Brazil, using the theses of José Carlos de Souza Braga as its principal reference. The article highlights the nebulous nature of what happens at the interface between the public and private elements of the Brazilian health system, and the limits inherent to the use of reductionary, or dichotomic, models to explain details and factors in this interaction.

[Private health insurance in Brazil: approaches to public/private patterns in healthcare].

This article draws on a previous review of 270 articles on private health plans published from 2000 to 2010 and selects 17 that specifically address the issue of the relationship between the public and private healthcare sectors. Content analysis considered the studies' concepts and terms, related theoretical elements, and predominant lines of argument. A reading of the argumentative strategies detected the existence of a critical view of the modus operandi in the public/private relationship based on Social Medicine and the theoretical tenets of the Brazilian Health Reform Movement.