critical analysis to the text "health policies – from formal project to concrete practice"

Abstract

The authors put into question popular institutionalized participation, through the Municipal Health councils — CMSs, mechanisms of democratic management and social control of the health system. Given the degree of commercialization of health and illness in the context of neoliberalism, with daily threats and evident privatization, retaking the discussion of the ideals of Sanitary Reform and the constitutional conquest obtained through social movements is both urgent and essential. The participation of representative organisms from the working class in this debate is indispensable, as well as the mobilization of their defense in their own interests, as much in the day to day activities of health agencies as in the great decisions that put their lives into play. In this sense, the initiative of Simionatto and Nogueira to reevaluate the situation of the CMSs, calling attention to the necessity of recreating forms of participation to guarantee the socialization of political power, represents an important contribution. This analysis politicizes the question since popular participation an control, in a moment of disactivation of public policies and social demobilization, can transform itself into just another demagogic discourse. It also contributes to the professional debate since Social Work, as a mediator between the State and the working class, pushes itself into the interior of social policies, being one of the agents of its operations. In this mediation, even if contradictory, it falls upon itself to become a stimulator of political participation on the part of the population, as one of the forms of increasing its presence among the citizenry.