Gastos públicos com medicamentos judicializados no Rio Grande do Norte nos anos de 2016 e 2017

Abstract

The judicialization of health is a phenomenon that began in Brazil after the Federal Constitution of 1988. This type of lawsuit has been growing in quantity every year and requests from beds of intensive therapy to medicines. When it has as requested the Public Power ends directly affect the financing of public health. For this reason, the processes of judicialization of medicines reach several public health policies, mainly the policies of access to medicines, and of financing. The objective of this article is to characterize the legal claims for medicines in the State of Rio Grande do Norte in relation to the financial aspect in the years 2016 and 2017. This is a mixed study, since an integrative review was elaborated on the expenses with the judicialization of drugs, and an exploratory descriptive study on the public expenditures with judicialized medicines in the State of Rio Grande do Norte. The first study analyzed 857 scientific articles, at the end of which 9 articles were included, all of which investigated Brazilian judicial processes, most of them concentrated in the southern and southeastern regions of Brazil, and set up expenditures between 350,000 and 219 million reais. The second study analyzed 370 individual lawsuits in 2016 and 2017, requesting medicines, moved in the State of Rio Grande do Norte. The amounts spent on the judicialization of medicines in these years were R $ 10,687,951.09. 572 drugs were required, 61.36% of which were outside National Drug List (RENAME) and the most demanded type of drug were antineoplastic agents and immunomodulators (24.13%). The purchase was made by the patient in 75.81% of the cases from the release of a court order. Thus, the judicialization of medicines in a small state causes iniquities in the access of users of the Brazilian Health System (SUS) to medicines and in the financing of Pharmaceutical Assistance.