There are probably many younger AusDoc readers who have only the vaguest idea of what a cheque is — and, once told, would likely be baffled as to why such a relic could even survive in a modern, cashless global economy.

Older readers, however, will be intimately familiar with one particularly stubborn example: the infamous Medicare doctor’s cheque.

This is the cheque for the Medicare rebate that is written out when a doctor chooses to charge the patient the gap fee only, usually because they are struggling to find the money for the full fee.

The government has long been uneasy about making this process easy. It fears that doing so would encourage doctors to charge patients out of pocket rather than bulk-bill, and talks darkly about the menace of “fee inflation”.