The importance of Supplementary Health in the demand for assistance services supply in Brazil

DOI: 10.15343/0104-7809.2013372216220

Abstract

Private Health Care in Brazil has officially conquered your space by the Federal Constitution of 1988 and had its regulatory
framework established by Law 9656 of 1998. Presenting itself as an alternative for obtaining health care services for the population,
the Private Health Care has been gaining attention not only by the amount of services offered, but also by the perceived
quality of care provided to its users. With the responsibility to serve more than 50 million Brazilians, Private Health Care is
relied as an important pillar of sustainability of the health sector. Through searches conducted in electronic databases of Literatura
Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde (LILACS), Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), also in
official data from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) and Agência Nacional de Saúde Suplementar (ANS),
it was clear that the public sector, represented by Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), would be unable to meet the demand of
medical care if the private sector does not exist. Thus, the Private Health Care has become essential to the state, which clearly
would not support the inclusion of this sector’s investments and costs in the budget of the Union. In contrast to this fact and
against the logic of the process, we see that regulation of the sector have pointed to a time of great difficulty in maintaining the
companies involved in Private Health Care, whose importance is expressed by its numbers, and its complexity of operation
imposed by stringent regulatory frameworks. The consequences of this contradiction must be examined.