Dismantling of the SUS in Porto Alegre and the repercussions for users in palliative care

Abstract

This article addresses the particularities of health policy, contested projects, and the dismantling of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) in Porto Alegre. It confirms that the processes of privatization and outsourcing are historical and have been advancing in the last two years. These processes are directly related to the precariousness of services, or require resistance from social control in defense of the SUS. It is observed that this reality causes numerous repercussions in the lives of users in palliative care, whose particularities are presented in this article. To address this reality, qualitative research was conducted, with two cycles of data collection: documentary and field research, with hospitalized users and their families in a high-complexity hospital in Porto Alegre. Among the study's findings, it is evident that the precariousness of the healthcare network impacts the occurrence of late diagnoses, as well as the impact of the lack of treatment for research subjects after diagnosis. It concludes that the dismantling of the SUS (Brazilian Unified Health System), through two so-called "new management models" and through the outsourcing and precariousness of services, is a constitutive part of the social determination of the healthcare delivery process. Therefore, it ends up causing numerous repercussions in the lives of palliative care users and their families, in contrast to the comprehensiveness of healthcare.