The public fund and the constraints of Brazilian universal health financing

Abstract

The objective of this article is to review the theoretical approach about Francisco de Oliveira’s (1998b) public fund, in order to contribute to a deep analysis on health and social security financing constraints. The first part discusses the concepts of public fund and its relation to social policies financing, identifying this author’s view in respect to public fund as anti-value, and also deals with the present critics in recent literature about his studies, by Behring (2009). In accordance with this analysis, it argues, in the context of financing contemporary capitalism and in the present capital crisis, about the fragilities that the concept of public fund anti-value has been facing. The second part, inspired by the first, deals with the process of Social Security and SUS financing institutionalization in the years of 1990’s and 2000’s, with particular interest to its facing constraints.