and I completely agree that such a level of treatment should be available to all (and i dare say would go a long way to paying for itself by preventing expensive conditions from occurring)
I think the difference between us comes in the validity of ascribing the healing power to homeopathic pills.
Surely we should be finding what works. What elements of the homeopaths treatment work? Can we replicate or even improve these? Are they, as the evidence overwhelmingly suggests, getting results from things other than their pills?
If that's the case then we could give people effective treatment. And if it's the interaction that works rather than the pills, then putting the pills in bottles and selling them in chemists labelled for specific ailments is surely misleading and betrays the people suffering who could be being given effective treatment instead.
I think right now though there is still a need for the alternative sector, which may contain its fair share of charlatans and frauds, but also in many cases provides positive, inexpensive, common sense approaches to health, and (at its best) encourages the patient to have more responsibility for, and control over, their own well-being. I have no time for any 'healer' who shrouds what they do in mysticism and bunkum- and that goes for GPs as well as the crystal merchants.
There's a lot wrong with the medical industry- vested interests and all that- and it's in the interests of this powerful and well-funded lobby to discredit homeopathy wholesale. It gets a negative press generally anyway, and I guess that's why I feel the need to put the other side of the story when something like this comes up.