IF the various signs of economic recovery have left anyone feeling a little light-headed, the perfect antidote is at hand.

It comes in the form of the latest Centre for Public Policy for Regions (CPPR) budget briefing which shows just how deeply public spending will be cut between now and 2017/18.

It's a thoroughly depressing read. The Glasgow University think tank calculates that by next financial year, only 40% of the planned cuts to Scotland's resource budget - which provides day-to-day spending on the health service, transport, police, council services and so on - will have been imposed.

So far £1.8 billion has been cut in real terms; a further £2.7bn has yet to be wiped off the budget. We're only halfway through George Osborne's eight-year austerity programme and the deepest cuts are still to come in 2016/17 and 2017/18.

Even the one glimmer of good news highlighted in the CPPR analysis requires a health warning. The Scottish Government will have more to spend on infrastructure and its famous "shovel-ready projects", but only thanks to some fancy financial footwork by the Treasury.

Rises in the capital budget, the CPPR confirms, are the result of a new loan support mechanism. In other words, the cash will have to repaid.

The scale of the squeeze will inevitably pose some pretty dreadful dilemmas for Finance Secretary John Swinney who has so far avoided giving any long-term indication of how the pain might be shared around.

The CPPR suggests "greater clarity" would be useful, though with the independence referendum looming ministers are unlikely to start slashing spending before they have to.

A cut hinted is a cut made as far as opposition politicians are concerned.

If the think tank has any advice to offer the Government, it seems to be this: take a closer look at the NHS. It is cautious and coded, but the decision to protect the health service budget - a pledge made by both David Cameron for the English NHS and by Alex Salmond in Scotland - is a recurring theme in the CPPR report.

It stands to reason, of course, that if NHS spending is protected then other budgets, local government or culture for example, will have to take a bigger hit.

But the think tank spells out the consequences in eyewatering figures. Non-NHS budgets, it warns, face a massive 25% cut, on average, over the planned eight-year squeeze if health spending is to be maintained right up to 2017/18.

The figure shows the price we are paying for shielding the health service. I say "we" because it's what we voted for. The SNP pledged to protect the NHS during the last election and the First Minister never misses a chance to remind his Labour opponents that they did not.

The Labour administration in Cardiff may have managed to trim the Welsh health service's budget, but Johann Lamont, the Scottish Labour leader, would be brave indeed if she fought the next Holyrood election threatening cuts to the country's most cherished institution. So is it even worth considering?

Given the knock-on effect on other services, it would be foolish not to pose the question: could NHS spending be cut without compromising the quality of care it provides?

Economists bold enough to venture there admit the world of NHS finance is a pretty impenetrable place. But some who have studied the books believe health service inflation - those soaring NHS costs often given as a reason for protecting the budget - is being driven more by a fast-rising wage bill than by drug prices or investment in new life-saving equipment.

If that's correct, it's a striking state of affairs given the pay freezes imposed on most public sector workers.

And it rather undermines the arguments for slashing other budgets quite so brutally to safeguard the NHS, especially when cuts in some areas, such as social work, can add to the health service's burden.

Whether there is the political will to take this on, to challenge the NHS if necessary or consider different spending priorities remains to be seen. But the CPPR's message is clear enough - it would be unwise simply to let the health service become a sacred cow.