Access to Health Care and the Power Relations: A Proposal of Analysis Based in Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu

The 1988 constitution of Brazil is an important point of changes in Brazilian health system, and also the ordinary laws, especially 8080/90 and 8142/90 laws. Thus, the fundamental principles were established, and the universal access was considered one of the most striking features of the system. The interest of researchers about the access to health has grown in the last years.  Although the comprehension about the access to health is still limited to static aspects with evaluation of indicators and fixed variable, and unclear about elements related to the dynamic process where the experience of the individuals are occurring and their relations with the social process in which has a dialectic link between health and society. Expecting to contribute in this field, this study aims to analyze critically the present model to analyze the access of health care and offer a model that allow the comprehension of the powers relation that pervade and characterize the actual experience of management and implementation of health care. The dimensions which characterize the experience of access in the health service, the practice of social and human relations, and the political context of the Brazilian health policy, make the concept complex and difficult to measure. In this proposed approach is possible to evidence elements with relational and political character intervenient in the health care access which the limits of traditional analysis don’t allow to know.  This large approach search, in the human and social science, the theory base and methodological to advance in questions still not clears about the phenomenon of access to the Brazilian health service.

Keywords:  Access to health care, Brazilian Unified Health System, Power relations