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Obviously, I can and do read The Telegraph every day online, but it's the physical entity in my hands that I want, across the kitchen table. Scrolling through neat screenfuls of type and gazing at jewel-bright pictures shimmering in one's hand is not shared activity. You do it alone (which is pleasurable enough, of course, if that's what you like). Me, I always want the heft and awkwardness of an actual, floppy newspaper that I can rattle at people or hurl across the room when it annoys me.

If the agency wasn't called NICE in the first place, I might resent its doings less. I know it stands for "National Institute for [Health and] Care Excellence", but why "Excellence"? Why not "Administration"? Why not NIHCA? You can just picture the inaugural board meeting of NIHCA where some wag helpfully pointed out that, "if we put the Health in brackets, kind of, and change Administration for Excellence, we could call ourselves… NICE!"

Someone should have authoritatively rejected that twee acronym, which reads more like a soppy mission statement than a title. An organisation that calls itself NICE wants to suggest that: "We are approachable folks, happy to help." It does not suggest what is – or ought to be – a fierce government body with regulatory powers over a powerful industry and a flabby population.

But, if we're all going to keep being NICE to each other, my patient GP is going to have to start adding even more boxes of pills to the pile I drag away every month. And I have to wonder, is it really because I'm worth it? And is the Recovering Heart Patient (RHP), currently sitting across the breakfast table from me, worth it?

Of course, none of us ageing turkeys is going to start voting for Christmas. Even though every newspaper story about the fight to keep every cholesterol-stuffed senior wobbling into his or her nineties is balanced by more stories about the stark budget choices faced by every NHS department in a country where the ageing population continues to burgeon.

When the RHP was advised to up his dosage, which of course he gets free of charge once he's home, did either of us cry, "No, doctor, heaven forfend: there must be worthier causes than this one." Of course we didn't. But that is why we have governments and administrative bodies. To make the decisions that need to be made that you and I can't be expected to make when we've got a dog in the fight.

And, when you have to make them, you can't always afford to be NICE.