THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HEALTH SECTORS IN PROVIDING COVID-19 ICU BEDS
TO FIGHT THE PANDEMIC: PROFIT OVER LIFE
Health Policy; Public Fund; Inverted complementarity; Pandemic; ICU Covid-19.
This work aims to analyze the relationship between the public and private health sectors in the provision of ICU beds to face Covid-19 in Brazil, in the context of a pandemic, capital crisis and the deepening of neoliberalism in Brazil. To this end, a bibliographical research was developed to support the understanding of the repercussions of the capital crisis in the Brazilian health policy, on the neoliberal aegis of cuts in the financing of public policies, restriction of rights, private appropriation of the public fund, precariousness, privatization and focus of public policies, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study also highlighted the actions (or absence thereof) of the Federal Government to face Covid-19, headed by a denialist head of state, whose only and unrestricted concern was the defense of private sector profits, not caring about the thousands deaths that could have been prevented. Through documentary research on the Ministry of Health's databases, we sought to observe aspects of inverted complementarity in the country, as well as the way in which the supply of ICU beds was consolidated for the exclusive care of patients with Covid-19 in the territory. Brazilian. We highlight the struggle around the unification of the queue for access to intensive care beds, spearheaded by social movements in defense of the lives of Brazilians who did not have access to the private health sector. The study developed here pointed out that the process of inverting the complementarity of the private sector with the public sector, based on the purchase of hospital and outpatient services, followed the trend of the years prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, showing itself to be above 50% in both first years of the health crisis. In general terms, although, according to the analysis parameters of the research developed here, it was observed that at the beginning of the pandemic, the supply of Covid-19 ICU beds was predominantly in the private sector, a scenario that was changed in the During the following year, several forms of subsidies were granted to the private health sector, with large volumes of public resources destined for this sector, to the detriment of the strengthening of the public sector.