This paper attempts to extract from the heterogeneity of the Brazilian private health care sector a qualitatively new characteristic of the 1990s, as well as the challenges of the sector's new dynamics, especially in its relationship to the public sector. The article's introduction discusses what are considered essential elements for understanding the changes occurring in the health sector. It situates the challenges within the framework of the economic model adopted in Brazil in the 1990s, focusing on developments linked to the dictates of productive (and especially financial) globalization. The second and third sections present the principal changes in the private health care sector in relation to supply and demand and their interrelations. Finally, by way of epilogue, the article discusses some of the challenges arising in the relationship between suppliers and consumers of so-called supplementary health care, i.e., "à la National Health System".
Brazil; health reform - 1990-1999; private health care; private health insurance; public-private relations in health
