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Tendo como ponto de partida o crescente número de ações judiciais para o fornecimento de medicamentos no âmbito do Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), fato que recentemente vem despertando o interesse tanto na área do Direito como na da saúde pública, o presente artigo tem como objetivo discutir a atuação do Poder Judiciário nos conflitos individuais para efetivação do direito à saúde e pretende contribuir para o debate sobre a intervenção do Poder Judiciário nas políticas públicas, especialmente nas de saúde, fenômeno este denominado judicialização. Para tanto, os autores partem do conceito de judicialização proposto pela Ciência Política para analisar as características e os limites da atuação do Judiciário nos conflitos individuais para efetivação do direito à saúde e buscam, ao final, estabelecer critérios para a superação de tais limites no julgamento das ações para o fornecimento de medicamentos no âmbito do SUS.

This article investigates policy and bureaucracy changes provoked by individual litigation for health care rights in Brazil, especially the one regarding access to medicines, looking at the effects it produced in relation to health technology assessment (HTA) and health care governance. The article first contextualizes the social, legal, and political conditions for the development of individual litigation for health care rights in Brazil. Then it points out the changes brought about by this litigation model and discusses their potential to contribute to efficiency and fairness in the health care system by the improvement of the HTA decision-making process and health care governance., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared.

Based on an analysis of individual claims for provision of medicines brought by users of the Unified National Health System (SUS) against the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the year 2005, this study aims to discuss the action and behavior of the court system in ruling on these suits. The study adopted a semi-qualitative exploratory documental research design, analyzing key aspects related to the claims, such as type of medication claimed by the plaintiff, wording of the court rulings, and the key elements used by judges in trying the cases. According to the analysis of the lawsuits and the concepts of judicialization and official standardization of medicines, the study concludes that when ruling on the provision of medicines, the court system grants the claims as submitted without considering the standardization of medicines adopted by the Ministry of Health, thus exercising excessive court intervention in health policy.