Data for: HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT AND JUDICIAL DEFERENCE TO PRIORITY-SETTING DECISIONS IN HEALTH CARE: EVIDENCE FROM BRAZIL

We obtained an exhaustive list of court cases with claims for healthcare treatments that were filed against Brazil’s public health system from 2011 to 2015 in the capital cities of three Brazilian states: São Paulo, São Paulo; Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul; and Florianópolis, Santa Catarina. The capital cities in each state were chosen with the assumption that the public attorneys defending the national health system there are best prepared to defend the government in court and justify its policy choices. The public attorneys and the public health system have their regional headquarters and staff specialized in responding to claims for healthcare treatments located in the capital cities. Therefore, these are the jurisdictions where any impact from the creation of CONITEC would most likely have occurred. The states selected for analysis are three of the five states with the highest volume of litigation for healthcare treatments in Brazil (CNJ, 2013). Both state and federal court cases were included in Porto Alegre and Florianópolis, but only state court cases could be included in São Paulo because the federal court there lacks an electronic database which prevented a search for relevant court files. Even though court files are publicly accessible, it was not feasible to hand-search the court’s voluminous paper records to locate the relatively small subset of cases involving claims for healthcare treatments. Given the large number of cases, a simple random sampling technique was used for each state-year. The sample size for each state-year combination was chosen to achieve a margin of error of 4% at the 95% confidence level within each state-year. We excluded cases when protected by a court order, when they involved a class action with indeterminate claimants, and when the court files were missing either the claimants’ or respondents’ briefs or the judgments.我们获取了2011至2015年间，巴西三个州首府针对公共医疗体系提起的医疗救治诉求诉讼案件的详尽清单：分别为圣保罗州的圣保罗市、南里奥格兰德州的阿雷格里港，以及圣卡塔琳娜州的弗洛里亚诺波利斯。 各州首府的选取基于如下假设：当地负责为国家医疗体系辩护的公职律师，在法庭应诉及论证政策合理性方面具备最优资质。公职律师团队与公共医疗体系的区域总部，以及负责回应医疗救治诉求的专项人员均设于各州首府，因此这些辖区正是巴西国家卫生技术准入委员会（CONITEC）成立所带来的影响最有可能发生的区域。 本次分析选取的三个州，是巴西医疗救治诉求诉讼量最高的五个州之一（CNJ，2013）。阿雷格里港与弗洛里亚诺波利斯的样本同时涵盖州法院与联邦法院案件，但圣保罗市仅能纳入州法院案件——因当地联邦法院未建立电子数据库，无法检索相关案卷。尽管法院案卷均为公开信息，但人工逐一检索该法院海量纸质卷宗以筛选出数量相对较少的医疗救治诉求诉讼案件，并不具备实操可行性。 鉴于案件总量庞大，我们针对每个州-年度组合采用简单随机抽样法。每个州-年度组合的样本量均设置为：在95%置信水平下，误差边际控制在±4%以内。我们剔除了以下情形的案件：受法院禁令保护的案件、原告主体不明确的集体诉讼案件，以及缺失原告或被告诉状或判决文书的案卷。