Three of the biggest medical schemes have millions of members between them, but they do not publicly disclose how many attend their AGMs, which is where trustees are elected.

My email inbox is exploding. Not just my work email, but my personal mailbox that I started as a freelancer back in 2013.

That's right folks, I have 143,657 emails dating back to 2013 - it was a point of pride that I didn't delete important emails...

As you can imagine, I am running out of space and now desperately trying to delete redundant mails. (How did I end up subscribing to so many newsletters? I mean, aside from the Daily Maverick newsletters, what else do you really need?)

And so, like you (be honest), I may sometimes be guilty of glossing over certain emails - like the ones notifying me about the annual general meeting for my medical scheme - and my right to vote.

About 8.9 million people belong to just more than 70 medical schemes currently, according to the Council for Medical Schemes. I looked at the three biggest medical schemes - Discovery Health, Momentum medical scheme and Bonitas.

The Discovery Health medical scheme has 2.8 million...