fatvegan

Instead of medical copayments - which I reckon would be inefficient in desperately poor households - why don't governments allocate redeemable health credit to certain families at the beginning of each year. Each time they go to the doctor they use up some of the benefit. Whatever doesn't get used is paid out at the end of the year, or over the following year, or added to their super, or whatever. It could even be niftily logarithmic so that as they approached the limit, the amount "used up" per service dropped. So it got gradually cheaper, but never quite free. Each time you went to the doctor the secretary could give you a little slip that said "Your next visit will reduce your health credit by $x".

I'm going through a bit of a love affair with super at the moment, so I'd probably prefer to use that if it was possible. You'd have a study the value people place on it. There probably isn't much incentive for people who are desperately poor to increase their super, because it all seems too far away.