Evaluating the impact of federal government health financing on the effectiveness of primary care: evidence for Brazil through hospital admissions

Abstract The objective of this work is to verify, through causal inference, if positive shocks in federal government funding in primary health care negatively affect the probability of use (hospitalization) of the hospital system due to improvements in collective health. Data from Brazil, which, with regard to health policies, has a basic health care system that is universal, public and free, was used. The results largely suggest that greater federal funding of primary care generated higher averages for this indicator in small municipalities in the country. This result indicates that this financing resulted in a significant effect of overflows in hospitalizations in the country’s hospital system, through greater access to these services by the population. However, the findings also show an ineffectiveness of these services to reduce the transfer of individuals to medium and high complexity care through preventive health care.