Individual Health Care Litigation in Brazil through a Different Lens: Strengthening Health Technology Assessment and New Models of Health Care Governance

This article investigates policy and bureaucracy changes provoked by individual litigation for health care rights in Brazil, especially the one regarding access to medicines, looking at the effects it produced in relation to health technology assessment (HTA) and health care governance. The article first contextualizes the social, legal, and political conditions for the development of individual litigation for health care rights in Brazil. Then it points out the changes brought about by this litigation model and discusses their potential to contribute to efficiency and fairness in the health care system by the improvement of the HTA decision-making process and health care governance.