[Equity and health reforms in the 1990s]

The first section of this article analyzes current issues on the agenda for research and debate in Brazilian Health Reform, from the perspective of social inclusion and exclusion. In light of the issues discussed initially, the second section analyzes the experience involving partnership between the public sector (the University Hospital at the School of Medicine, University of S o Paulo) and the Supplementary Health Care System (SSAM). The authors' hypothesis focuses on the depletion of the original set of ideals underlying the Brazilian Health Reform movement after the gains it obtained in the 1988 Constitution and in the face of the country's new reality, with the resulting need to recuperate the emphasis on the political dimension in health studies, highlighting the issue of constructing the identities of social stakeholders. Based on this initial approach, the authors proceed to analyze this partnership, demonstrating the existence of a "double waiting line" users of the Unified National Health System, or SUS, and those of the SSAM which does not imply discrimination per se in access to technology, but reproduces within the University Hospital the forms of discrimination that already exist in Brazilian society.