The concept of a medical-industrial complex has been used since the 1980s in Brazil to highlight the multiple and complex relations that are established both among various players in the health sector and between them and other sectors of the economy. The medical-industrial complex is a product of the health system's history, and particularly that of its evolution. It is a stage in which, due to the need for reproduction of capital investments, private capitalist practices become hegemonic and determinant in each player's functions, roles, and relations within the system itself. The hypothesis discussed in this article is that the health system now has two fundamental attractors shaping the behavior of its agents: technology and the enhancement of capital value. What has come to be known as the medical-industrial complex was constituted for the former, while the medical-financial complex emerged with the latter.
Health system; medical-industrial complex; medical technology
