David Cameron pledged to speed up Labour's healthcare reforms as he claimed that the Conservatives were now "the party of the NHS".
The Tory leader said the he wanted to go "further and faster" with the Government's drive to increase patient choice and open up the NHS to private sector health providers.
He used a speech in Bolton to try to reclaim the political initiative on health after last week's damaging row over Tory MEP Daniel Hannan's attack on the NHS as a "60-year mistake".
John Prescott's NHS Twitter challenge to David Cameron
Mr Cameron dismissed the Labour attacks as "political point-scoring" and stressed his party's "wholehearted commitment" to the principle of a healthcare system free at the point of delivery.
But he said that the increasing demands of an ageing population, coupled with the rising costs of new treatments and technologies, meant it was essential that the NHS became more efficient.
While the Government had belatedly begun moving in the right direction, he said that the process needed to be accelerated.
He sought to re-open old divisions within the Labour ranks by praising the market-driven reforms advocated by Alan Milburn, the Blairite former health secretary who clashed repeatedly with Gordon Brown when he was in office.
However, he said that their implementation by the Government had been "damagingly unclear and inconsistent".
"Only a stable, transparent and pro-competitive framework will attract the independent sector to invest in and expand the capacity of the NHS," he said.
"That means clear payment and commissioning structures - a clarity that's been sorely lacking from the Government.
"By reducing political risk, we will open up the opportunity for any willing provider to supply care to NHS patients, accepting commercial risk, at NHS prices or less and at the right quality standards."
John Prescott's NHS Twitter challenge to David Cameron
Mr Cameron said that while greater competition within the NHS was the key to greater patient choice, the Government had still not gone far enough.
"Labour have rightly moved down this road. Their speeches show that they understand the public's demand for greater control over the healthcare they receive," he said.
"But their actions reveal a party that finds it hard to let go of the levers of state control with patients in the NHS, after 12 years of Labour government, still experiencing far too much of the old-fashioned, 'get-what-you're given and be grateful-for-it' treatment."
In contrast, he said, the Conservatives were "unambiguously clear" that giving people greater control over their lives was a good thing.
"We can create a more user-friendly NHS, where patients have a choice over the doctor they see, and the hospital they're treated in," he said.
"They'll be able to check their own health records online in the same way they would their bank accounts, and decide which doctor sees those records.
"In all these choices they'll be guided by a GP they have a real relationship with - because it will be a GP they have chosen, rather than one they're stuck with."
Mr Cameron said that his NHS reforms would be combined with a new approach to public health, managing down the demands for healthcare by reversing recent rises in obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, and sexually-transmitted infections.
John Prescott's NHS Twitter challenge to David Cameron
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The best party to help the NHS would be the one to get us out of the EU and stop this massive walk into britain for free handouts attitude.This would help the NHS and other benefits that have overloaded our Benefits systems.
if the tories are the party of the NHS then my name is Joseph Mengele. They opposed it in 1948 and many of their MP's and members oppose it now. After all, how can they make a profit if it's free at the point of use.....Oh yes, by privatising cleaning, porters, and numerous other bits of the NHS, making it far worse than it has ever been.
Unfortunately Crumsall-Lass, Nu-Labour's record on marketisation and PFI within the NHS doesn't inspire confidence they can be trusted either.
People must have short memories or don't want to remember what the Tories under Thatcher did during their many years in office - Wrecked it.
Managers getting bonuses for closing wards etc. Sounds like they want to do it again.
I don't think leaving Europe/immigration has anything to do with this. Moving towards 'isolationist' would make matters worse, not better.
Good healthcare management and reform is not only a matter of money. This is something the Tories have to recognise.
Britain should be looking towards the Dutch/The Netherlands system, which is rated the *best* in Europe, despite the country having more 'immigrants' than us!
In Salford we have a top performing Hospital & Primary Care Trust - can't see that continuing if the Tories get in & start charging £20 for a GP visit.
"The Tory leader said the he wanted to go "further and faster" with the Government's drive to increase patient choice and open up the NHS to private sector health providers."
So he can help his cronies line their pockets with more of our tax money. Recent comments from Tory MEPs should telll the voters all they need to know about the Tories and the NHS.
'Immigrants' is a generalisation of a broad spectrum of people. Perhaps we have more immigrants who are here to sponge off the system as opposed to immigrants coming to work or for other reasons. We all know and see the difference. More people in the country, more strain on the NHS. Pretty obvious that one.
The Cameron window dressing just does not cut it. While hollow words of an NHS love fest slip off the tongue, his Thatcherite Friends rubbish the NHS both across the Atlantic and on these shores. By the time his Tory lot had finished with the NHS when they were last in Government the service was on its knees. I do recall the same old tired Tory language of the internal market, commercial efficiencies, outsourcing and decentralising. The neo Thatcherites have arrived!
Crumpsall-Lass,what utter tripe. the idea for a NHS system was first proposed in 1943 when we had a coalition government( the health secretary who introduced the white paper was a tory by the way).The Conservative party manifesto of 1945 contained a commitment to a free at the point of delivery health service paid for through general taxation. tory opposition was over the Labour plans to close down the sucessful community hospitals as part of a centralised NHS.
year on year health spending has increased in real terms, except for 1978 when it was cut- this was by a Labour Government
Sorry but there are far more 'non-immigrants' with obesity, poor diets, smoking and drink-related illness causing a 'strain' on the NHS. You only have to look in A&E, weekends/evening full of chavvy/scrote types.
Like I said, the Netherlands has HIGHER numbers of immigrants, but their system copes BETTER.
"More people in the country, more strain on the NHS. Pretty obvious that one. " Depends I suppose, if according to Ecconomists Harvey Nash, their effect is to generate 54 billion pounds a year for the ecconomy then they may well be funding a fait chunk of it.
Maybe they are working in it as well, according to the BBC in 2003 inthe Rhondda valley, 73% of GPs were south Asian.
Other less popular areas have also benefited from an iflux of oovrseas GP's, a quote from a Unversity of Manchester report "Those startling figures are repeated in other deprived and depressed areas. It is the South Asian doctors who have provided the service to these communities. I believe that without them the NHS would have collapsed."
It seems this is not new, in 1971 around 12% of NHS nurses were Irish.
Following a hospital building programme around 1960 a recruitment drive for doctors and nurses launched by health minister Enoch Powell resulted in the arrival of over 18000 from India and Pakistan
The green parties plans are far more substantial, and actually stand a chance of working.
I just dont believe anything the Tories say about anything