Setor privado de planos de assistência à saúde: identificação das ações de atenção à saúde voltadas à população idosa, no município de Belo Horizonte

Abstract

The Brazilian elderly populations growing time push to a new health system conception, toward the new demographic-epidemiologic paradigm. Elderly people dont receive the right assessment to theirneeds, in the nowadays health system conception, built in a hospital logic of health care organization. As a group, the elders have more chronic disease, and spend more the health care resources. The HealthMinistry, in 1999, made the Elder Health Policy, whose purpose is to adequate the health system toward the elders needs, and defined diretrix to lead this adequation. In this context, the managed care appears as an alternative, and its goal is health care expenditure reduction, because those tend to increase, as the population gets older. The Brazilian private health system, recently got a regulation by the Law 9.656/98, under the Regulator Agency (ANS) created by the Law. 9.961/00, and identified anincrease in the assistance expenditure. In this way, began practices to cost contention, and between those, have started actions toward the elder people. This study looked for investigate the actions in attention of elderly populations healthy from private health companies, between the period of july and august, on the year of 2005, at the municipality of Belo Horizonte, and figure out the similarities between these actions and the diretrix of the Elder Health Policy. A computer telephone research wasmade on 62 selected private health plan companies. Even though the researched health plan companies in Belo Horizonte municipality have been responsible for 15% of members with 60 years old and older,and among them the women have been the majority (63%), and the population in productive age have been 60%, (these are in aging process), the study found only 15 health care companies with healthactions toward elders, but little actions toward aging promotion.