The picture of judicialization in judicial health demands proposals by the Union Public Defender in the City of Porto Alegre/RS

This study aimed to characterize the judicialization of health in the performance of the Union Public Defender, in the city of Porto Alegre, state of Rio Grande do Sul, from January to December 2018. The guiding premises for this study were the identification of the main demands met and the socioeconomic variables of the claimants - gender, race / color, age, income, education - from the perspective of public health. The research is relevant because judicialization of health has occupied a prominent place in the volume of claims that reach the service provided by the Judiciary. This situation requires attention from health system managers as the profile of claims that are processed and granted in this area can serve for analyzing and updating policies. To this end, a quantitative and analytical methodological strategy was used. The data were collected from the Information System of the Porto Alegre Unit of the Union Public Defender. The results showed that the institution analyzed needs to improve the identification of the socioeconomic variables of the claimants and that the main demand judicialized by the Union Public Defender was for high-cost medications. It was concluded that judicialization of health can reveal itself sometimes as either a space for the realization of social rights, or sometimes as a deviation from the democratic profile of access to care recommended by the Brazilian Public Health System.