Broad front fights to defend SUS in Sao Paulo

Difficulties and restrictions on access to health services were the main driver of the ongoing movement of many segments of Brazilian society towards the Constitution of the Unified Health System (SUS), in the 1980s and consolidated in the Constitution of 1988, which defined it as a state duty to ensure health for all of Brazil’s population.

Just a decade after the creation of the SUS, the state government of São Paulo created pillars that would undermine public money and weaken the SUS, with the creation of social health organizations that received from the governor the keys to managing equipment. The government health public, which has opened up to the logic of the private sector, where health is now treated as a commodity and users lose the place of citizens with their rights in the case of customers and consumers.

This new method of management opened up a set of cracks in the SUS rules that directly affect the service provided to the population, while drying up social control systems, such as federal, state and municipal health boards, which ensure social control, inspection, and popular participation in the presentations of community demands.

The triumvirate of federal, state and municipal administrations has been working for years in the SUS Finance District, which has been frequently denounced by health movements, unions and institutions such as the Board of Auditors and Open Accounts citing cuts to public resources for health.

A symbolic moment and profound public health carnage occurred in 2016, with the approval of the constitutional amendment bill, PEC 95, when the proportion of federal revenue resources invested in health fell from 15.8% in 2017 to 14.5% (2018) and 13.5% (2019).

In São Paulo, Governor João Doria maintained a pattern of reducing resources in social areas and choosing to invest in works that could be printed on billboards and featured in election advertising scenes.

Among the paths taken by the Doria is tax exemption, which means not charging taxes, especially ICMS from preferred companies and sectors, which reached the level of 20 billion Brazilian riyals in the state budget for 2022.

By abandoning this group, Doria deals another severe blow to public health and education, since these areas have investments associated with the group.

The damage and losses caused by cutting public funds are directly experienced by the population in need of public services, who seek help in the health systems for examinations, consultations with specialist doctors, surgeries, treatments and even access to medicines of continuous use.

To strengthen the tools of defense, resistance and protection of the SUS, we participated in the formulation and launch of the Broad Front of Defense of the SUS in the state of São Paulo, on Friday (5).

:: Brazilian Social Security and the nap of the rich ::

We have SUS – a wide, comprehensive and free health system – which has special characteristics and obligations, and carries out health work services, with the aim of promoting, protecting and restoring health. It houses the technical and human body of Priority in Training and Qualification, which has delivered a successful response in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic when tested.

Unity of grassroots movements, health entities, health councils, unions, central unions, and leaders committed to public health, to work perpetually in the relentless defense of the SUS, to promote it as a global and free public policy.

On this broad front we carry the banner of confronting managers who work with their backs and turn to people’s needs, in favor of commercial interests and focus on promotional marketing in search of more power and prestige, while SUS overcomes difficulties, leaving our vulnerable population with many obstacles to turning Without health care, their lives are at risk.

Luis Claudio Marcolino He is a social activist, economist, banker, union leader and vice president of Central Unica dos Trabalhadores in São Paulo. He served as Deputy State (2011-2014), Technical Director of the Development Agency of São Paulo (ADESAMPA), Regional Supervisor of Labor, and President of the Federation of Bank Workers of São Paulo, Osasco and the region. (Luis Claudio Marcolino channels: www.luizclaudiomarcolino.com.br; facebook.com/lcmarcolino13; instagram.com/lcmarcolino13; twitter.com/lcmarcolino)