A austeridade fiscal e a crise sanitária: Um estudo acerca dos efeitos da dívida pública brasileira e da emenda constitucional do teto de gasto (EC nº 95/2016) no financiamento da saúde pública (2008-2021)

Abstract

This study sought to investigate the effects of public debt and Constitutional Amendment (EC) No. 95/2016, known as the spending cap concerning the social security financing system, with emphasis on public health, given the social and economic impacts worsened by the health crisis (COVID-19). The "spending cap" legislation refers to an economic austerity measure, in which it advocates for the contraction of public spending and the reduction of social participation by the state in order to balance public accounts and reduce public debt. To achieve this result, the measure proposes freezing public spending on health and education for twenty years. From this scenario, the insurgence of the health crisis (2020-2021) that impacted world economies and resulted in a high number of deaths, when installed in Brazil resulted in a conflict between the contractionist measures of public budget and the need for expansion of public resources for health. Moreover, the study approached through bibliographic survey and quantitative analysis of the budgets committed by the Union, in the period from 2008 to 2021, in order to investigate the evolution of investiments on health. From this, it was questioned in what extent such policies contribute to the panorama of (dis)financing, adopted by the federal agency, for health expenditures. The hypothesis, thus, started from the context of economic recession (due to the crisis) and the low financing of public health, which result in the increase of costs for the maintenance of private health plans and insurance, at the same time that it argues for an access to the right to health rather universal, free and public than exclusionary, mercadological and costly.