The NHS abandons Patient Choice. We pay for treatment. But we can only have what THEY want to give us. What does this mean for patients like Anne?

The NHS no longer wants to spend money on Homeopathy. This is not a surprise. The NHS has long been a bastion of conventional medicine, a creature of the pharmaceutical companies. If patients want treatment the NHS is set up to give it to us, and to adopt the old motor car adage, you can have any treatment you want - as long as it involves pharmaceutical drugs!

The NHS is now almost totally a pharmaceutical monopoly. Want to buy a Ford car? No, sorry, you can't do that. We don't sell them. WE (a public body funded by people like yourself) have decided that you no longer have that choice. This is the only car we sell now. Take it. Or leave it.

And that is the situation that patients who want homeopathic treatment are now faced with. We may be entitled to treatment because we are UK citizens, but the this public body, the NHS, will no longer fund the treatment of their choice.

• It's a political matter - it is about Health Freedom.
• It's a health matter - it is about Patient Choice.

But it is also a personal matter. Some people have been having homeopathic treatment for their illnesses, and if and when this treatment is stopped they will be in serious difficulty. I have been talking to several people in this situation in recent weeks, usually patients who have tried every conventional treatment available to them without any of them working. Then they discover homeopathy. It works. And a few people were fortunate enough to persuade a reluctant NHS to pay for their treatment. But now those patients are worried their treatment, the only treatment that has worked for them, will now be stopped.

Take the case of Anne - not her real name. She has talked to me about her situation. She has been using homeopathy -since she became paraplegic - for over 40 years

She initially discovered homeopathy following a bout of pneumonia when she was 31, with 3 small children. She was given antibiotics, galore, and it took her ages to recover. Eventually she consulted a homeopath, and has been having homeopathic treatment ever since. She has also had osteopathic treatment, and used herbal remedies. Despite her many health issues she does not take any pharmaceutical drugs, and she is determined that she does not want to do so.

               "It actually terrifies me to end up at the mercy of the NHS because most general hospitals don’t understand spinal cord injury.... Every day is a battle to keep skin healthy, bladder operating to the best of my ability and bowels moving at their scheduled time. It all pulls a lot out of my system and at 66 I need to focus on keeping mentally robust too."

But Anne is a determined and intelligent lady. She has obviously done a lot of work, researching her condition, and the treatments available to her. She told me that she wants to learn as much as she can about using homeopathy in order to to stay well. She has recently cured an ear infection with homeopathic remedies. As a paraplegic she has regular urinary tract infections (UTI's) but thanks to homeopathy she no longer has to use antibiotics for these. So she is delighted. She despairs when she sees her friends in the SCI (spinal cord injury) community having intravenous antibiotics for sepsis and UTI's, and spending months in bed with pressure sores, et al.

So whilst Anne is usually confident about staying well with homeopathy, alongside other natural therapies, she has some trepidation about what the future holds for her. Like all of us she is not in control of her destiny. And she worries that if she does have to go into hospital she knows she will struggle to get the treatment she wants for herself. She will be routinely denied her patient choice.

When the NHS was inaugurated in 1948 its intention was to offer the best available medicine, free at the point of need. Anne knows that any NHS treatment will be free.

• But it will not the treatment she wants. 
• It will not be the treatment she has found, from experience, to be best for her.

The NHS is now a monopoly supplier of one kind of medicine. It is dominated by pharmaceutical drug treatment. Anne does not want this, and has spent her life trying to avoid it. The NHS has now taken a decision that money should not be spent on homeopathy because (it says) there is "no evidence' that homeopathy works.

Anne is the evidence, one piece of evidence in many millions, who knows that it does.

So for Anne it is not a political matter, health freedom. It is not just a medical matter, patient choice. It is a deeply personal matter concerning her health, her future, and the treatment she receives for her condition. Ultimately it will be about how she dies.

Yet Anne is not alone in this. Anyone who goes into hospital, today or tomorrow, because of an accident, or emergency, or an acute illness, is faced with the same dilemma she is grappling with. We talk a lot about our human rights, but surely this right, health freedom, is the most important right of all.

It is Anne's right to choose the treatment she receives. Her treatment should not be dictated to her by conventional doctors who think they know best, and know everything. But unfortunately that appears to be the direction in which the NHS is going.