ID: 15332
Authors:
Murillo Villela Bastos.
Source:
Revista de Administração Pública, v. 13, n. 4, p. 95-116, October-December, 1979. 22 page(s).
Document type: Article (Portuguese)
Show Abstract
In this article, the Author tries to show that the essential manifestations of mutualism are as old as human society itself. However, mutuality specifically organized to protect in sickness has begun as a consequence of urban life and of the spread of monetary economy because, from then on, illness started to mean disbursement of money to buy remedies ar to pay for services rendered. In a brief historic résumé, the Author tells how social insurance or social security was introduced in the world and specially in Brazil, where the recognized legal starting point is the Eloy Chaves Act, which emphasized medical assistance among the benefits it instituted. In any country, social security is tied up to the prevailing social system, because the benefits that is intends to implement ar to improve must be achieved in accordance with patterns and cultural standards inherent to the time and to the population to wich they are destined. It is thus that social security as it exists in all of the Latin American countries follows a model adapted to the socio-economic framework of countries with a low per capita income, hight income concentration, strong concentration of professional personnel and of health services in city are as where there is a convergence of income, high cost and low productivity of medical services, all that allied to a precarious state of sanitation within the population. And yet, the financiai resources are used to maintain an expensive and inefficient welfare organization that, in addition to giving a poor contribution to the improvement of health conditions of the system's beneficiaries, has serious repercussions upon the standards of social assistance affecting the rest of the population (the richer minority excepted). Brazilian social security is exceptional in the Americas, both for the scope of its plans of benefits and the coverage they offer. It covers today more than 80% of the population, assuring to almost every person, in addition to medicai services, some form of monetary help, at least in sickness and old age. It provides, also, an ample coverage of industrial injuries or accidents, including what concerns the rural population. The Lei Orgânica da Previdência Social (Social Security Basic Act) was drafted with a view to the uniformization of the contributions, benefits and administration of the extant six institutos de aposentadoria e pensões (retirement and pensions institutes), whose management was under a strong influence of the trade unions. The Brazilian social security started, thenceforth, a new stage in its history: abandoning its corparative phase, of a protection organized by groups of analogous professions or activities, and pursuing the universality of the country's population, equalizing the rights of every beneficiary of the system instituted for urban workers...
