Reflections on the judicialization of the right to health and its implications in the SUS

Abstract

This paper presents the issue of judicialization of the right to health in Brazil. Data from the National Council of Justice evidence a substantial increase in the number of lawsuits concerning the right to health. We emphasize that the national doctrine exhaustively discusses ways to make the authority more effective, but it does not, as a general rule, discuss the economic aspect of health judicialization. Using the concept of opportunity cost extracted from economics science, it is shown that the judge, by deferring the lawsuit formulated by the plaintiff, automatically forces the Executive Branch to reduce the scope of other policies to generate resources to meet the court order. In specific contexts, this setting ends up favoring individual rights at the expense of the collective rights of SUS users, in violation of the principle of isonomy and efficiency. Finally, the case of the judicialization promoted by the hemophiliac patients in the Federal District is shown as a way of evidencing, at the factual level, the consequences of judicialization in the SUS policies.