Abstract

The health care system reform in Brazil was launched as part of the struggles for building a democratic regimen, in the last quarter of the XX century. Defending the universal right of health care as part of the citizenship status and the State duty to provide it, this social movement has been able to provoke a deep transformation in the health care policy. Three different and simultaneous processes were at the roots of the transformations although they not always were convergent. They are the processes of constitucionalization, institutionalization, and individualization. Constitucionalization means the norms and laws that assure a legal frame to the health care right; the institutionalization deals with the creation of a new pact for the federalism and a decentralized and participatory decision-making process, based in consensus building. Individualization requires the construction of political actors and a new political arena. This article analyzes the creation of the SUS (National Health Care System), considered as the most original policy in the Brazilian democracy and evaluates the progresses and contradictions among the mentioned processes regarding the public value of fighting poverty and social exclusion.