Public health beyond the debate between law and meritocracy

• Autor(a) principal: Marques, Rosa Maria
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Leite, Marcel Guedes, Depieri, Marcelo Álvares de Lima
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Textos & contextos (Porto Alegre)
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/fass/article/view/39958
• topic: COVID-19; Public health; Universality; National sovereignty; Social cohesion; COVID-19; Saúde pública; Universalidade; Soberania nacional; Coesão social

This article discusses the redefinition of a portion of public health policies in view of the new reality established by COVID-19. The first part deals with the evolution of the concept of health as a right since the end of the 19th century, within the scope of social security in several countries. The second part discusses the criticisms made by neoliberal thinking to public spending on health kicked off by the 1970s crisis. In the third part, we defend that part of public health may be in the process of being reframed, beyond the concepts of civil rights or meritocracy. Among these arguments, we highlight that, by making it clear that this will not be the last pandemic we will face, the economic and health crisis that accompanied the advance of COVID-19 has brought back public health at the center of the discussion, now placed as a key element for the guarantee of national sovereignty and social cohesion. These are essential for the continuity of the accumulation process with the globalization of capital. To this end, this article presents a literature review that analyzes both the access to healthcare from a critical historical perspective and the monitoring of the consequences of the health crisis resulting from COVID-19.