But first, some background. I married one of those tall fair boys who spent their childhoods on the beach, getting sunburnt most weekends and the legacy of all that beachiness splashes across decades.

And, for beachy ones married to someone like me, part of that legacy is being subject to constant vigilance and a constant anxiety about the cost of prospective health treatment.

A few years ago, He Who Must Never Be Written About came up to me with a surprise tickle, the kind which invokes me shrieking. That led to wrestling which, in turn, led to me noticing a strange mark on the underside of his arm.

I stopped laughing. I said, accusingly, how long has that been there? And of course he knew exactly what I was talking about. About a month.

The good news was that it was nothing, well, nothing important anyhow. It had some of the characteristics of mayhem. But it wasn't mayhem itself.

The better news is that the good news led to him being more vigilant himself. Seeing a dermatologist. And she is just brilliant. For years, I've been giving all those freckles the once over. Now it's in the cool gaze of someone who actually knows what those freckles mean.

When she tells him he needs treatment, he does it. Slicing, scraping, excising, medicating. He's had the entire festival of solar keratosis treatment. The latest one cost a bomb, $450, for the application of a cream on the Australian register of therapeutic goods. It doesn't get there without clinical proof it works.

Skip over this next bit if you hate technical information but the specific indications are: "Treatment of thin or non-hyperkeratotic and non-pigmented actinic keratoses on the face and scalp when other registered therapies are unacceptable . . . where surgery is considered inappropriate." In this case, the middle of the face.

Medicare doesn't cover it. The receptionist suggests we ring our private health fund. It doesn't cover it either. The call centre operator acknowledges that it's a shame but then lists a whole lot of things NIB does cover.

I'm fascinated by the list. It includes homeopathy. I then send an email to my health fund asking for the peer-reviewed literature which says homeopathy actually works. I get the most ridiculous response ever.

"As homeopathy is a holistic system that aims to strengthen the mind and body against disease, it can be used to help treat a wide array of common and chronic ailments. Homeopaths may be sought for seasonal conditions such as colds, flu and hay fever as well as a wide range of illnesses including allergies, asthma, eczema, stress, period pains and endometriosis, headaches and respiratory infections. Advocates also claim homeopathy can assist in breaking the negative emotional patterns believed to be the underlying causes of some physical conditions."

I am losing my mind as I read this. Then: "It is important to note that NIB provides benefits for the consultation only. No benefit is payable for any remedies."

Thank Gaia for that. Means the fund is not actually paying for phony "vaccines" although clearly paying for the consultation that suggests the phony "vaccines".

Oh. My. God. Not only do I pay $133 a fortnight for insurance with these people, but now it's clear that the fund supports crackpottery.

I ring Paul Glasziou, professor and director of the Centre for Research into Evidence-Based Practice at Bond University and the former director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University. He ran the homeopathy working committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council. That committee's job was to suss out whether homeopathy works.

The committee's report, released last year, said: "There was no reliable evidence from research in humans that homeopathy was effective for treating the range of health conditions considered: no good-quality, well-designed studies with enough participants for a meaningful result reported either that homeopathy caused greater health improvements than placebo, or caused health improvements equal to those of another treatment."

Then I find the Review of the Australian Government Rebate on Private Health Insurance for Natural Therapies, which published its own report at the end of last year.

The report said: "The purpose of the review was to ensure that natural therapies are underpinned by a credible evidence base that demonstrates their clinical efficacy, cost-effectiveness and safety and quality . . . the Private Health Insurance Rebate will be paid for insurance products that cover natural therapy services only where the Chief Medical Officer finds there is clear evidence they are clinically effective.

"Such clear evidence has not been found."

Yet my health fund, wonderful in so many ways, gives a rebate on treatment for homeopathy. It's not the only fund supporting homeopathy. It's just the only one where I've had the experience.

Here's my problem. We are cajoled by the federal government into taking out private health insurance. It works this way, according to the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman's website: "Most Australians with private health insurance currently receive a rebate from the Australian government to help cover the cost of their premiums."

So, the federal government props up the private health insurers by giving me a rebate. And when it does that, it props up the business model of those private health insurers. And that business model includes providing rebates for treatments that don't work. That business model is about trying to make an unsustainable product – private health insurance – attractive and therefore sustainable.

Homeopathy is a folk remedy, not a medicine. So many trials done. So much peer review. Still no evidence it works.

It's hocus pocus and the federal government, through the private health fund rebate, allows its money to be funnelled into fakery.

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