The Health realm and the consumer’s right - doi:10.5020/18061230.2005.p211

Abstract

The Consumer’s Protection Code was one of the largest conquests of the organized Brazilian society, once it brought a series of warranties and improvements to the consumption relationships between the citizen and the service supplier or producer. The advantages are larger as larger is the consumer’s purchasing power. Its great limitation lies in the areas understood as of the State’s responsibility, as in the health matter. In this field, the most appropriate instrument, in our country, is the Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS (Unique Health System) that foresees universal, integral and equalitarian access, in a decentralized way and with the population’s participation in the definition of its administration. The public budget for the warranty of such rights, however, is insufficient, which induces the search on the part of the consumer for health plans or other forms of direct payment for “health”. However, when any citizen (consumer or not) needs tertiary health attention, generally, the only option is the SUS, which overloads the public investment that injects most of its resources in this type of attendance, coincidentally, the most expensive and complex. At this time, the Consumer’s Protection Code ceases to guarantee the consumer’s rights and what is intended is that the State executes its real role in the warranty of health as everyone’s right.