As we know the National Heath Service is the national religion. As such we're continually told that it's different. That the rules which apply are in some manner orthogonal to the rest of reality. This being a usual feature of religions.

This appears not to be so:

GPs are doling out fewer antibiotics after being paid bonuses for cutting prescribing levels, research shows.

Under the schemes, groups of doctors can receive an extra £5 for every patient on their list if they meet targets to cut antibiotic prescribing.

A study by Imperial College London and Public Health England found that the financial rewards helped to reduce antibiotic prescriptions for common respiratory tract infections by three per cent.

The first thing to know about standard economics being that incentives matter. Here we have a simple response to a simple incentive. We are not off in some alternate reality, we're in this world with the normal rules.

Markets increase efficiency and productivity. Indeed, so far as we know, competition is the only manner in which productivity continually increases over time. For economic systems without it don't.

Similarly, prices do indeed impact demand.

Excellent, we can get on with discussing health care - yea even the NHS - using the normal rules we have about reality and human reactions to it. That is a relief, isn't it?