The article analyzes the issue of prison health from a "rule of law" perspective. It problematizes whether the reality of the prison health system allows us to state that the rules are not relevant to the care provided by the State to persons deprived of liberty and whether a prison health system that is characterized by a distribution of burdens and benefits at the margin of the formally valid system has emerged. The study is relevant as it shows how the Ministry of Health has failed to fulfill its function of designing public policy on prison matters. At the same time, it reveals the lack of real control over prison health. The research is of a mixed type, legal, normative and empirical, quantitative and qualitative, based on primary and secondary sources. The results indicate that the State, protected by the ideology of subsidiarity, is indifferent to the international normative standards that regulate the right to health of persons deprived of their liberty, and allows for the existence of an alternative system, different from the one accessible to citizens in general, lacking legal guidance, and insufficient to guarantee the right to health.