“SUS is for everyone, for everyone who claims it”: managing health litigation in a time of crisis

Abstract

The judicialization of health is a controversial topic. Some authors see it as the source of a series of problems in health policies that span from the disruption of waiting queues to shortages in drugs purchased by public administrations. For others, the recourse to legal action is a path taken to correct asymmetries in access to public services. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2016 and 2017 in the Health Claims Resolution Chamber (CRLS), I compare these opposing stances and show how the requests for judicial and/ or administrative intervention are to some extent incorporated into the ‘normal flow’ of the Unified Health System (SUS) in the context of a healthcare crisis in Rio de Janeiro. My central argument is that in a period of widespread precarity, the right to health is itself managed through the administration of litigation.