The Inequities in Health Shaped by Political Forces: A Critical View

The aim of this paper is to analyze critically how the State Power is formed and influences health. We use Discourse Analysis Theory to analyze, in discursive materiality (laws, regulations, determinations) as indications of the ideological effects that prevent citizens from perceiving the fact stated in the WHO report (2008). That report places the State in a paradoxical situation: as responsible for changes in the social determinants of health and, at the same time, as the main cause of health inequities. Ten years after WHO report on this subject was still being produced as a letter of intent on the demand for new ways of thinking and acting on health. How can this happen: the State itself is one of the main causes of health inequities and seems to be another political institution being challenged? In analyzing the topic of “health inequities”, we can shed some light on the effects of meaning generated by this ambiguity: the category of a legal subject is subjected and its action of challenging the unfair distribution of social resources must necessarily take place according to the laws, within the limits set by the State itself. The appearance of an “object of choice” is in reality located within limits, leading subjects to misery. How to get around the inequities in health brought by the State? We believe that the way out lies in the construction of such social conditions to promote solidarity. It is in this context that health promotion becomes an end in itself and legitimates actions in health that overcome inequalities.