[Economic crisis and disparities in spending, supply, and use of public and private health services in Brazil from 2011 to 2019].

This study sought to analyze the repercussions of the economic crisis on the public and private sectors of the Brazilian health system and perform a trend analysis of economic and care indicators, based on secondary data from official public sources related to spending, the economic performance of health plans and insurance, and the supply and use of services. The results showed stagnation of public spending on health, as well as reduction of per capita public spending and of access to public health services. On the contrary, in a context of falling income and employment, health plans retained customers, increased revenues, profits, and their care production.

[Economic and sanitary crisis and performance of health and insurance plans: similarities and singularities between Brazil and the United States].

The economic crisis that began in the United States in 2008 and its impact in Brazil starting in 2014 preceded the health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering these three time intervals, this article analyzes the susceptibility of health plan and insurance companies to economic cycles of recession in Brazil and the United States. There is evidence of a relationship between periods of economic crisis and retraction of actions and services in national health systems.

[Financialization, accumulation, and shareholding changes in companies and corporate groups in the Brazilian health sector].

This study aims to analyze the shareholding dimension of changes in companies and corporate groups in the Brazilian health sector from 2008 to 2017. The idea was to understand the strategies of accumulation in a context of financialization, defined as a systemic pattern of wealth in contemporary capitalism. The shareholding changes were submitted to descriptive and exploratory analysis based on different sources.

[Financialization of the health sector in Brazil: theoretical and methodological challenges to the investigation of companies and business groups].

The article describes the history of the response to the theoretical and methodological challenges in research on companies and corporate groups in the Brazilian health sector that reorganized their shareholding structures, diversified their activities, and expanded their financial operations. Such movements in corporate concentration and expansion were analyzed with an approach to the frame of reference for financialization in contemporary capitalism in the analysis of selected companies and corporate groups. Corporate strategies were classified in three dimensions: shareholding, financial, and accounting structure and influence on the public agenda and the respective indicators orienting the organization of information from diverse sources for companies and corporate groups from 2008 and 2017.

The current challenges of the fight for a universal right to health in Brazil.

Brazil has changed a lot since the enactment of the 1988 Federal Constitution. Although substantial advances have occurred in the health sector, old problems persist and new ones arise. The main goal of ensuring the universal right to health has not been achieved.

[Private health plans and the health of workers in Brazil].

The scope of this paper was to compare the changes in coverage patterns by health insurance plans among public servants, the military and other employees in Brazil and verify if the purchase of such health plans is reflected in the respective self-reported prevalence of Systemic Arterial Hypertension (SAH) and Diabetes Mellitus (DM) in the country. For this purpose, workers in the public sector (federal, state, municipal or military) and other workers aged ≥18 who were included in the 1998, 2003 and 2008 campaigns of the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) and in the 2013 National Survey were studied. Over the years of the study, it was observed that Brazil's public service employees, both civilian and military, have presented a high and increasing proportion of health insurance purchase compared to other workers.

[Thirty years of history in the Brazilian Unified National Health System (SUS): a necessary but insufficient transition].

This article describes changes in the public, nonprofit, and private components of the health care networks and health insurance and health plan companies in Brazil, based on the accumulated knowledge concerning the gains and obstacles in the Brazilian Unified National Health System (SUS) and differences between policies for democratization and democratizing processes. This central premise allowed analyzing praise versus criticism for the SUS and the contemporary nature of relations between the public and private sectors, drawing on secondary data from agencies in the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary branches. The article concludes that the highly financialized private and private-charitable sectors imposed anti-democratic and anti-democratizing standards in the use of public funds.

[Processes of expansion and limits to privatization of healthcare in Latin America: beyond typologies].

The aim was to conduct a literature review on health systems and comparative studies of health policies and systems to identify the leading contributions to the analysis of privatization, especially the role of health maintenance organizations and health insurance companies in national health systems in Latin America. The review focused on analyzing the adequacy of theoretical and methodological perspectives or proposals and their indicators to measure the private health sector's participation and interaction with national health systems. We thus seek to problematize the adequacy, limits, and potentialities of such perspectives for investigating the privatization processes in Latin American health systems.

Healthcare and development: a dialog with the thinking of Celso Furtado.

Understanding that conditions of health are dependent on more general nationwide factors relating to the level of development means admitting that 'sectorization' of health service is something that tends to limit the formation of knowledge. It also points to the importance of investigating the relationship between health and development, including issues about the processes that feed the persistence of the polarization between modernization and exclusion which has been a history of Brazil's contemporary development. This paper, based on a review of the literature, aims to look more deeply at the structural conditioning factors of the relationship between health and development, and their reproduction in the formation of contemporary knowledge, based on a dialog with the ideas of Celso Furtado.

From health plan companies to international insurance companies: changes in the accumulation regime and repercussions on the healthcare system in Brazil.

The concentration and internationalization of health plan companies in Brazil gave them a clearly financial face. Based on the need to understand the health care industry's capital accumulation patterns, the current study examines health plan companies' expansion strategies through the classification of their supply and demand characteristics by recent historical periods and an analysis of recent shareholding trends in one of the leading corporations in the Brazilian health care industry. The 1960s to 2000s witnessed changes in the scale of demands for health plans and adherence by companies to long-term accumulation strategies.

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: a systematic review of observational studies.

Objective: To systematically review the use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in observational studies.

Methods: This study is a systematic review of articles that use the ICF in observational studies. We took into account the observational design papers available in databases such as PubMed, Lilacs and SciELO, published in English and Portuguese from January 2001 to June 2011.

[Considerations on the Sistema Único de Saúde in the twenty-first century: an interview with Lígia Bahia].

This interview with Lígia Bahia explores evaluations of the first 25 years of Brazil's Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) and analyzes the project's progress, impasses, and missteps. Bahia is critical of both tendencies currently found within SUS: the one that sees the system as aimed at equity and the other posing equality as its goal. She criticizes the ambivalence that various spheres of government have displayed in their decisions regarding large corporate groups and private health insurance plans, which conflict with the ideas of SUS.

[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.

Health conditions and health-policy innovations in Brazil: the way forward.

Brazil is a large complex country that is undergoing rapid economic, social, and environmental change. In this Series of six articles, we have reported important improvements in health status and life expectancy, which can be ascribed largely to progress in social determinants of health and to implementation of a comprehensive national health system with strong social participation. Many challenges remain, however.

The Brazilian health system: history, advances, and challenges.

Brazil is a country of continental dimensions with widespread regional and social inequalities. In this report, we examine the historical development and components of the Brazilian health system, focusing on the reform process during the past 40 years, including the creation of the Unified Health System. A defining characteristic of the contemporary health sector reform in Brazil is that it was driven by civil society rather than by governments, political parties, or international organisations.

Income and vocational integration of Brazilian physicians since the establishment of the National Health System.

Objective: To analyze trends relating to physicians' vocational integration and income composition from the Pesquisas Nacionais por Amostra de Domicílio (PNAD - National Household Sampling Surveys).

Methods: PNAD microdata from 1988, 1993, 1998 and 2003 were analyzed in relation to demographic, social and occupational parameters. In the exploratory analysis, trends relating to physicians' employment and income were considered.