On the RPGCodex, Forktong said that in single-player, the gold costs for certain decisions, like healthcare was a flat fee. Now, I'm not sure if the fee scales the greater your income, so if it already does, never mind this.
I also do not know how many other flat fees could end up being stacked on top of the healthcare one or how much of a total drain that would be on your economy. With those disclaimers of complete ignorance aside
here we go:
The Healthcare flat fee seemed to be 2 gold. That might be a lot per turn when your total income is under 20 gold, but when it's like 40+, you're no longer really going to notice 2 gold more or less. It's not even a single squad of Troopers.
If you get the healthcare question randomly about 30 turns into the game, that 2 gold fee isn't going to be much. My problem isn't that Healthcare hurts on turn 3, but that it DOESN'T hurt on turn 30.
To me, that kinda seems to not really be much of a trade-off or a hard decision. Unless you really are going for a faction that doesn't like it, there's no real downside to paying that 2 gold, there's no long-term consequence. If there's no meaningful long-term or ongoing consequence, it seems a bit of a missed opportunity.
Therefore, healthcare should probably cost more. But just tying it to income doesn't sit right with me. Healthcare costs are tied to amount of people, not amount of money. If you play a "Revenue increase" card or plant a gold mine, then your healthcare costs would go up without your population going up. So my idea is to tie healthcare costs to the total population under your control. Healthcare costs a flat 1 gold, plus 1 gold per every 5000 or so population under your control (adjust as needed). It would still hurt more at the start, and the cost would increase as you start controlling more people and land - but the increased revenue from the new territories would be more than sufficient to cover it.
There, now universal Healthcare is not just a free approval bonus with a token gold cost, but an actual, noticeable drain on the war economy, no matter if the healthcare question comes up on turn 3 or turn 30.
