That’s charging a minimum co-payment for general practitioner services, including those that are currently bulk-billed and free to patients when they go to the doctor.

Until the idea was dropped yesterday, the GP co-payment has dominated political discussion for over a year.

It became a key factor in the collapse of the political standing of Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Coalition government.

Few expected it to be a centrepiece measure in last year’s budget, and fewer still expected the Frankenstein’s monster of a measure that the government put together.

After several reboots, and the Labor opposition’s declaration that it would never change Medicare without the consent of the medical profession, it could even be said that AMA national president Brian Owler is now de facto health minister.

Nevertheless, Health Minister Sussan Ley has said that the government remains committed to price and value signals in general practice.

Ley said they haven’t totally given up on the principle that if Medicare is about everyone paying according to their means that those with means should pay at least something.

While GP co-payment critics point out that Medicare is perfectly sustainable now, they dodge the reality that, as we move towards mid-century, most baby boomers will have reached the end of their lives and today’s “fat kiddies” will start reaping what they and their parents have sown.

The debate over the GP co-payment was fierce and polarising.

But if the government decision to dropping the $5 rebate improves the quality of GP services, it’s welcome progress.

What isn’t so good is that the co-payment controversy swamped any rational conversation about the much wider structural reform Medicare needs to cope with mid-century demand pressures.

As a result, we aren’t talking of rejigging health funding to reflect the best models of primary and acute care, such as the concept of a “medical home” where patients are central to a network of relationships with GPs and providers far better joined up and co-ordinated than what most families get now.

We aren’t talking about better information sharing between providers and patients, and about how to ensure that patients not only have comprehensive electronic health records, but how those records actually improve the quality of care as patients move to and from primary and hospital care.

And we certainly aren’t talking about ensuring that Medicare and other health funding reflects current best clinical practice, and rewards quality as well as quantity of services, so that patients are treated as people and not simply as clinical cases or revenue units by the “system”.

Price signals are important, but in a wider reform context rather than as the “magic bullet” the political firestorm has turned them into.

We need a broad Medicare reform conversation in a depoliticised framework, and the timing needs to be taken out of the government’s budget timetable.

What matters is a comprehensive, careful and consultative process facilitating steady but palatable policy change.

A major Productivity Commission inquiry, like that as just made sweeping recommendations for funding childcare, is an ideal vehicle for that conversation.

In the meantime, the Abbott government’s dropping of its overambitious GP co-payment measures is welcome. They were dead on arrival.

Terry Barnes wrote the think tank paper that started the GP co-payment debate.