THE PARTICIPATION OF INTEREST GROUPS IN NOTICE-AND-COMMENT AND PUBLIC HEARING PROCEDURES AT THE NATIONAL AGENCY FOR PRIVATE INSURANCE (ANS)

This article aims to analyze the influence of interest groups in the decision-making processes at the National Agency for Private Health Insurance (ANS). Interest groups can be described as organized efforts to influence government decision-making. This article analyzes two mechanisms under which interest groups act to influence regulatory decision-making: notice-and-comment and public hearing procedures. Regulatory agencies are required by law to conduct notice-and-comment rulemaking and have the discretion to promote notice-and-comment and public hearings in any sort of decision-making. This article identifies which interest groups participate more actively in these participation mechanisms and examines the extent to which their comments alter the content of ANS's decisions. For answering these questions, I used data of notice-and-comments and public hearings held by ANS from 2001 to 2019, which were extracted from a database of the Regulation by Numbers project at FGV Direito Rio. The article concludes by demonstrating to which extent interest groups behave in line with the findings of the national and international empirical literature.