SUS funding in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), since its creation in 1988, has a history of insufficient resources to effectively guarantee universality and comprehensive care. Its underfunding, derived from the lack of support from part of society and neoliberal policies undertaken by various governments in the 1990s and 2000s, turned into effective reduction in real terms of funding resources after the approval of the “expenditure ceiling” in 2016, aggravating the structural system difficulty. The Covid-19 pandemic generated a preeminent need to expand the service capacity of the public health system and, with that, the resources for the SUS were expanded. However, this greater financial availability was the result of extraordinary measures and was restricted to the years 2020 and 2021. The ordinary budget for health in those years and the 2022 LOA demonstrate that the underfunding continues and that the pandemic did not change the lack of priority given to healthcare within the federal budget.

KEYWORDS:
Covid-19 pandemic; underfunding; withdrawal of SUS resources; Brazil