First my disclaimer. I've paid for my coursework including many volumes of references and all the remedies I purchased. I've only charged for the cost of the remedies and worked pro-bono but gladly accepted donations when given. I've never been in any NHS or state funded/private insurance as a practitioner. I can't comment on that aspect although I can see the public frustration in supporting an alternative form of treatment that has no apparent repeatable result in double blind tests, consequently labelled as placebo. I'd probably join you on the picket march with that.
That's where comparisons between scientific methodology and homeopathy come acropper. Scientific methodology is too simplistic. Here's an example:
You get 200 random individuals, 100 per set and give them an experimental drug to relieve psorasis (eczema), the other set gets the placebo. The drug wins and the 10% of placebo results is as expected. No problems with any of that. It gets published in a peer review journal.
Another 200 split into 2 sets, one gets given homeopathic sulphur (treats specific forms of eczema). Both sets report similar results as if they took a placebo. Therefore homeopathy is proven to be as effective as a placebo lactose pill.
We all go away happily convinced.
The homeopath looks at these results and quickly realizes that it's not testing 100 rash ridden people at all as each of those 100 are individual cases can have a possible 100 different remedies based on physical type, left side, right side, extremities, mind, skin, eyes, nose, throat (tongue), worse for night, worse for day and so on. So the sample in this case cannot represent a fair test. Now if someone collected 100 'fair, fat and flabby' females and given 8 primary remedies in an extended trial then I'll sit up and take notice.
The other aspect of homeopathy I want to state is that it began as a form of treatment by medical doctors. They knew their patients very well and would treat a broken limb with splints, operate when necessary, use herbal tinctures for disinfectants, prescribe opioids for pain, depression and so on. When they came up against a topical rash, they prescribed coal tar because pretty much everyone was affected by coal dust. Coal tar soap is still used today for eczema. It doesn't cure it, but it relieves the symptoms for a while. Why use calamine lotion on chicken pox pustules? Because it works, temporarily. Now some doctors adopted Hahnemann's approach and instead of hiding the symptoms or 'driving it back into the body', used the homeopathic concept to drive the disease 'from inward to outward'. So they mixed up the active ingredient of coal tar and gave it internally in weak doses (they didn't want to poison their patients). For some, this worked! These cures were recorded, collated by like minded, cutting edge pharmacology and eventually published in a materia medica. The Materia Medica - the primary resource for homeopaths is a collection of case files over a hundred years, matched with those drugs/herbs/poisons/elements that cause similar symptoms and was proven to work in individual cases.
It was a solution when there wasn't an alternative. It became a specialty in time, but it was always had a medical (not snake oil) basis. Medicine has advanced over the last 75 years and homeopathy has become orphaned, abandoned by doctors.
Here is a sample page of a simplistic materia medica: http://www.homeoint.org/books/...
Just by reading that in a historical perspective will give you a feel of what the patient was like.
Homeopathy has changed over the last 30 years with certain schools promoting 'mixtures' and trying to keep up with tech or extending it into forms of radionics where the vibratory state of a remedy is captured, made into a slide and the projected light from it infused into some blank pills or sterile water. If you want to equate this with placebo then go for it. I just don't believe it myself until proven, and I haven't seen any proof.