Article by A Jain: Does homeopathy reduce the cost of conventional drug prescribing?

I was fascinated by the evaluation suggesting that homeopathy reduces the cost of conventional prescribing.[ ¹ ] In my view, the author was over-optimistic in her conclusions. If one would include in this evaluation the cost of the multiple, lengthy homeopathic consultations one would probably generate the opposite result. If one would then assume that homeopathic treatments are on average longer than conventional ones, the pendulum would swing even further the other way. Finally if one would try to economize on conventional drug costs, the picture would change even further against homeopathy: patient No 2, for instance suffered from mild menopausal symptoms, hypertension and hyperlipidaemia. Her conventional prescription consisted of Kliofem, Bendrofluazide and Simvastatin. Diet, exercise and other life-style advice could have helped her perhaps more than these three drugs at no cost and with additional benefit for disease prevention. The more I studied this publication, the more I became convinced that what its results suggest is the opposite of what its author thinks they show: homeopathy may actually be more expensive than good conventional care.

• References

• 1 Jain A. Does homeopathy reduce the cost of conventional drug prescribing? Homeopathy 2003; 92: 71–76.