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The Judicialization of Health and the Quest for State Accountability: Evidence from 1,262 Lawsuits for Access to Medicines in Southern Brazil
The impact of increasing numbers of lawsuits for access to medicines in Brazil is hotly debated. Government officials and scholars assert that the “judicialization of health” is driven by urban elites and private interests, and is used primarily to access high-cost drugs. Using a systematic sample o...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Harvard University Press
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5070692/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27781011 |
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author | Biehl, João Socal, Mariana P. Amon, Joseph J. |
author_facet | Biehl, João Socal, Mariana P. Amon, Joseph J. |
author_sort | Biehl, João |
collection | PubMed |
description | The impact of increasing numbers of lawsuits for access to medicines in Brazil is hotly debated. Government officials and scholars assert that the “judicialization of health” is driven by urban elites and private interests, and is used primarily to access high-cost drugs. Using a systematic sample of 1,262 lawsuits for access to medicines filed against the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, we assess these claims, offering empirical evidence that counters prevailing myths and affirms the heterogeneity of the judicialization phenomenon. Our findings show that the majority of patient-litigants are in fact poor and older individuals who do not live in major metropolitan areas and who depend on the state to provide their legal representation, and that the majority of medicines requested were already on governmental formularies. Our data challenge arguments that judicialization expands inequities and weakens the universal health care system. Our data also suggest that judicialization may serve as a grassroots instrument for the poor to hold the state accountable. Failing to acknowledge regional differences and attempting to fit all data into one singular narrative may be contributing to a biased interpretation of the nature of judicialization, and limiting the understanding of its drivers, consequences, and implications at local levels. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5070692 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Harvard University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-50706922016-10-25 The Judicialization of Health and the Quest for State Accountability: Evidence from 1,262 Lawsuits for Access to Medicines in Southern Brazil Biehl, João Socal, Mariana P. Amon, Joseph J. Health Hum Rights Research-Article The impact of increasing numbers of lawsuits for access to medicines in Brazil is hotly debated. Government officials and scholars assert that the “judicialization of health” is driven by urban elites and private interests, and is used primarily to access high-cost drugs. Using a systematic sample of 1,262 lawsuits for access to medicines filed against the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, we assess these claims, offering empirical evidence that counters prevailing myths and affirms the heterogeneity of the judicialization phenomenon. Our findings show that the majority of patient-litigants are in fact poor and older individuals who do not live in major metropolitan areas and who depend on the state to provide their legal representation, and that the majority of medicines requested were already on governmental formularies. Our data challenge arguments that judicialization expands inequities and weakens the universal health care system. Our data also suggest that judicialization may serve as a grassroots instrument for the poor to hold the state accountable. Failing to acknowledge regional differences and attempting to fit all data into one singular narrative may be contributing to a biased interpretation of the nature of judicialization, and limiting the understanding of its drivers, consequences, and implications at local levels. Harvard University Press 2016-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5070692/ /pubmed/27781011 Text en Copyright © 2016 Biehl, Socal, and Amon http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research-Article Biehl, João Socal, Mariana P. Amon, Joseph J. The Judicialization of Health and the Quest for State Accountability: Evidence from 1,262 Lawsuits for Access to Medicines in Southern Brazil |
title | The Judicialization of Health and the Quest for State Accountability: Evidence from 1,262 Lawsuits for Access to Medicines in Southern Brazil |
title_full | The Judicialization of Health and the Quest for State Accountability: Evidence from 1,262 Lawsuits for Access to Medicines in Southern Brazil |
title_fullStr | The Judicialization of Health and the Quest for State Accountability: Evidence from 1,262 Lawsuits for Access to Medicines in Southern Brazil |
title_full_unstemmed | The Judicialization of Health and the Quest for State Accountability: Evidence from 1,262 Lawsuits for Access to Medicines in Southern Brazil |
title_short | The Judicialization of Health and the Quest for State Accountability: Evidence from 1,262 Lawsuits for Access to Medicines in Southern Brazil |
title_sort | judicialization of health and the quest for state accountability: evidence from 1,262 lawsuits for access to medicines in southern brazil |
topic | Research-Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5070692/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27781011 |
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