On the Heterogeneity and Politics of the Judicialization of Health in Brazil

Abstract

In response to our article, “The judicialization of health and the quest for state accountability,” in which we examine a systematic sample of 1,262 lawsuits seeking access to medicines in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, Octavio Luiz Motta Ferraz raises three concerns: 1. that our use of the term “myth” to describe the popular narrative in Brazil about the “judicialization of health” is inaccurate; 2. that our data has limitations, and particularly that our claim that judicialization “largely serves the disadvantaged” in Rio Grande do Sul is not fully warranted; and 3. that our findings “reaffirm” his view of what he calls “the Brazilian model of right to health litigation.”1