Pharmaceutical policies: political facts produced by the Federal Legislative Branch between 2016 and 2020

Abstract

The study aimed to analyze the performance of the Federal Legislative Branch in relation to pharmaceutical policies in the period from 2016 to 2020. This is an explanatory study, based on documentary research, using as data sources the websites of the House of Representatives and the Federal Senate, with the search term ‘medicamento’. Four types of documents (bills, supplementary bills, provisional measures and proposed amendments to the Constitution) were included, referring to  pharmaceutical policies, originated from January 2016 to December 2020. The search was performed by two reviewers, obtaining a total of 330 acts, organized, through the content analysis technique, into three categories (pharmaceutical assistance, pharmaceutical regulation and health control of medicines), of which one political fact from each was analyzed. The Legislative acted in an expressive way on pharmaceutical policies in the studied period, producing political facts with the interaction of different actors and that impact on access to medicines and on their rational use.