This article discusses low-income users' adhesion to private health insurance companies. This article considers the macro-structural analysis insufficient for the understanding of this phenomenon and takes into account the existence of a "field of possibilities" in which people make choice and decisions. Ten users of health insurance companies were interviewed. People's representations about health systems were analyzed through three dimensions-quality, access, and safety. In this sense, the analysis aimed to understand the choices logic in relation to the acquisition of a private health insurance. Finally, it is observed that the representations about the vulnerability of one's own health condition guides the protection's strategy -- to use public health system or buy private health insurance -- practiced by subjects.
Private health insurance; Public health system; Social representations