The “coerciliation” of the right to health
Dismantling barriers to access to justice for rare disease patients in Brazil
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.2531Keywords:
access to justice, harmony ideologies, patient associations, rare diseasesAbstract
This work examines the expansion of conciliatory mechanisms for addressing healthcare disputes and their impact on access to justice for patients with rare diseases, revealing the congruence between globally circulating “harmony ideologies” and a broader process through which the State abdicates responsibility for social welfare provision. Drawing on a case study of the suspension of the drug eculizumab the study combines a doctrinal analysis of the right to medicines in Brazil with a sociolegal approach. The findings show that the adoption of alternative mechanisms for resolving healthcare disputes, promoted under the discourse of de-judicialization, reinforces structural inequalities, operating as a barrier to access to justice—which has, in many cases, been the only effective means to secure life-saving treatments. The article concludes that conciliation in healthcare, far from democratizing justice, has contributed to institutionalizing forms of administrative coercion that subordinate the judiciary to the technocratic rationality of health technology assessment agencies, amounting to “law’s abnegation” in the administrative state.
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