The judicialization of health care: a case study of three state courts in Brazil

The scope of this study was to describe and compare records of the results of lawsuits filed in three Brazilian courts in cases involving the Unified Health System. A survey was made of the judgments listed on electronic sites of Courts of Justice in the states of Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul and Minas Gerais using a specific script. A total of 558 judgments was analyzed. There was a greater frequency of ordinary lawsuits (73.1%). In the majority of cases, it was not possible to identify the economic situation of the plaintiff or the legal representative of the defendant (54.5%). In cases where such identification was possible, a public defender was the most common (71.5%). The cases were predominantly individual in all three states. There was a large number of requests for injunctions (83.8%), which were almost always granted (91.2%), with the allegation of urgency/emergency in almost all cases (98.8%). The majority of decisions were favorable to the users of the public healthcare system (97.8%). The decisions studied showed that the users sought to ensure their right to health individually, using the public authorities to file their lawsuit, but there is a perceived difference in posture between legal courts evaluated. There is a strong tendency of the judiciary to accept these requests.