Social Healthcare Organizations: a phenomenological expression of healthcare privatization in Brazil

Heloisa Maria Mendonça de Morais, Maria do Socorro Veloso de Albuquerque, Raquel Santos de Oliveira, Ana Karina Interaminense Cazuzu, Nadine Anita Fonseca da Silva

The study analyzed the expansion of Social Healthcare Organizations (OSS in Portuguese) in Brazil from 2009 to 2014. The ten largest OSS were measured according to their budget funding and their qualifications as non-profit organizations were explored, considering evidence of their expansion and consolidation in the management and provision of health services via strategies proper to for-profit private enterprises. The study is descriptive and exploratory and was based on public-domain documents. In their relations with government, the OSS have benefited from legal loopholes and incentives and have expanded accordingly. There has been a recent trend for these organizations to simultaneously apply for status as charitable organizations, thereby ensuring multiple opportunities for fundraising and additional tax incentives, permission to invest financial surpluses in the capital market, and remunerate their boards of directors. These organizations tend to concentrate in technology-dense hospital services, with clauses concerning increasing financial transfers to the detriment of other regulatory clauses, and special contract modalities for enabling services that are absolutely strategic for the overall functioning of the Brazilian Unified National Health System. Thus, in this study, the OSS are one component of the Health Economic and Industrial Complex, acting in management, provision, and regulation of services in a scenario of intensive commodification of health and the transfer of public funds to the private sector.