IS IT POSSIBLE TO IMPOSE LIMITS ON THE PRINCIPLE OF COMPREHENSIVE ACCESS TO NEW THERAPIES AND MEDICINES IN THE UNIFIED HEALTH SYSTEM? Sérgio Zagarino Júnior, Roberto Bortman, Rodrigo dos Santos Dias

Abstract

Article 196 of the Federal Constitution guarantees access to health in na integral, universal and egalitarian way. In the modern world, the new technologies have guaranteed new treatments, medicines and possibilities to soften, inoculate or even cure diseases. However, access to health has been the subject of several demands, either for the refusal by the Unified Health System, or for the lack of updating of the National Relation of Essential Medicines (RENAME) or the Clinical Protocols and Therapeutic Guidelines. The eminent lawyer Lenir Santos has defended the limitation to the principle of integrality, in the case of health care, by means of an option to the public or private system and by the establishment of protocols and guidelines. That is, it defends compliance with the principle of integrality with simple compliance with the protocol. This clearly allows the Unified Health System and the State to comply with this principle in a facilitated way. But is this limitation possible and does it not violate the very principle of wholeness and, consequently, the principles of universal and equal access? The violation is patent and constitutes an undue limitation, as will be demonstrated throughout the article.