The health industrial complex and the need of a dynamic approach on health economics

摘要

This article develops an analytical approach towards the study of health industrial complex, comprising the set of productive activities on health and their interdependencies, according to a perspective of political economics and innovation. The capitalist enterprising logic penetrates all the productive segments, involving as well the industries which were already traditionally working on these bases, as segments having organization forms on which it was possible to verify the acquaintanceship of enterprising logic with others that were moved away from them, as vaccine production and biological products, phyto-derived and health care services. The article analyzes the interaction between the health system and the economical-industrial system, explaining how it has been succeeding a dichotomy on the relation between both of them, which is expressed by the deterioration of the innovation potential of the country and on a growing and worrying external vulnerability of health politics. It is suggested that the traditional neoclassical approach of health economics is not sufficient to attend health industrial complex, due to the intensity of the process of structural change, and the need of a theoretical alternative approach incorporating the dynamics of economic and institutional transformation, of accumulation and innovation.