The 1988 Federal Constitution incorporated the broader concept of health, which, from the legal viewpoint, is the possibility of legitimating health as everyone's right and the State's duty. However, when this civil health right enters the Brazilian scenario, it is hard to imagine the whole society as an equal set of individual and collective demands before the outrageous social inequality even when people share the same geographical area. In this context, and based on the Family Health Strategy (FHS), formulated by the Ministry of Health in 1994, established as priority in the political Brazilian scenario, this study aims to identify the limits and possibilities of this proposal to guarantee health rights for the Brazilian population as a whole, and particularly, Rio de Janeiro's inhabitants. It is a descriptive research with a qualitative approach that uses bibliographic and documentary research, besides the semi-structured interview carried out with two FHS actors in the state and municipal spheres of Rio de Janeiro. As a result, it was possible to identify that nowadays, almost 20 years after the Constituent Assembly, and 12 years after the implementation of the Family Health Strategy, the latter still represents only a possibility to make the principles of the Unified Health System real, hence ensuring health as everyone's right.
health policies; health rights; Family Health Strategy