Regional inequalities and the role of federal resources in the SUS: do political factors affect the allocation of funds?

Abstract The research problem in this paper is a discussion of the political factors affecting the allocation of federal resources in the SUS (Unified Health System) and its effects on regional inequalities in Brazil. The main objective was to explore the influence of political factors as criteria for the distribution of federal funds, considering the regional inequalities of the country. A mixed method was used by collecting quantitative data to study the allocation of resources for each unit of the Federation, from 2003 to 2017, in search of outliers, which require more in-depth explanation based on qualitative research methods. The fuzzy-set QCA software was applied in the qualitative research phase for identification of technical and political conditions, where required and/or sufficient, for an atypical distribution of resources from one year to another. The quantitative analysis demonstrated the decrease of regional inequalities in allocation of resources to States in the North and Northeast. However, when studying the constraints of the distribution of the funds for the States of these regions, qualitative analysis demonstrated the influence of political factors on the allocation of resources, rather than purely technical factors.