ABSTRACT
Conjuncture analysis studies in the field of public health have gained space, contributing to systematize elements of reality and outlining possible scenarios for better performance in the political arena. Based on historical and dialectical materialism, this essay seeks to analyze the Brazilian political conjuncture from the 2016 coup to the COVID-19 pandemic. The essay is structured in three sections: the first recognizes the importance of thinking about the past to understand the future, as well as the mobilizing and threatening forces of the Unified Health System (SUS); the second outlines a profile of the ultra-neoliberal project imposed on health policy in the face of the 2016 legal-media-parliamentary coup and the election of President Jair Bolsonaro, in 2018, whose bargaining chip included the reduction of social security; the third section discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic was handled by the federal government and subnational entities, as well as the role of civil society and organized politics. In the final considerations, the challenges of progressive forces for the 2022 election year and for the sustainability of a possible popular government that guarantees the universal right to health are presented, which is part of the greater challenge of resuming and guaranteeing democracy itself.
KEYWORDS
COVID-19; Health policy; Unified Health System