This paper redeems the significance of the health reform movement and the municipal healthcare movement in the context of the 1970s and 1980s, and its social, politic and innovative power in the democratic reconstruction of the day. It then notes that the implementation of the constitutional guidelines, regulated in 1990 by Laws 8080/90 and 8142/90, has been characterized in the last 22 years by four major and mounting obstacles imposed by State policy on all governments: federal underfunding; federal subsidies to the private health plan market; resistance to reform of the State management structure of service provision; and the handing over of administration of public facilities to private entities. The Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) included half the population that was once excluded in the public health system, though these obstacles keep the coverage of primary care focused below the poverty line and with poor resolution. The conclusion drawn is that the real policy of the state for healthcare in the past 22 years has prioritized the creation and expansion of the private health plan market for consumer rights, and relegated the effectiveness of constitutional guidelines for civic human rights to second place.