Unions have attacked Tory claims to be the "progressive" party after David Cameron's number two boasted that his government would let privateers take over health and education.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne told BBC radio that the Conservatives were "the progressive force in British politics now" because only they were truly committed to the privatisation of public services.
He called for an end to the "state monopoly" on free education, claiming that sending profit-hungry privateers into Britain's schools would drive down costs.
Mr Osborne declared: "It is the Conservatives, as the progressive force in British politics now, who are thinking seriously about how you change the way you deliver public services so that they can improve the quality of service delivery even in a period of budget restraint."
The top Tory went on to praise Sweden and the US for part-privatising their education systems, a decision which he claimed had led to better contracts for computers, textbooks and land and lower overall costs.
But National Union of Teachers general secretary Christine Blower pointed out that "the privatisation in Sweden and in some states of America has led to an increase in social selection and therefore a widening gap in access. Social cohesion has been damaged rather than advanced.
"No-one - least of all a teachers' union - would want to see cuts in the education service budget, but increasing the use of the private sector is not the answer," she said.
"Education should be for the benefit of children and not for the benefit of shareholders and company proprietors.
"There is no evidence that private companies provide a better service, as we have seen from the academies programme that already exists."
Public-sector union UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis said: "Once again, the Tories aim for a soft target.
"Instead of tackling the real culprits who reap huge rewards for failure, they turn their guns on the very public services that people rely on to get by in the recession.
"Shadow chancellor Osborne's claims to have 'progressive' ideas are nothing but cheap window-dressing."
Mr Prentis cited today's UNISON-commissioned survey, which showed that the British public support keeping their services under public control.
I don’t believe it the Yankees are criticising our NHS I think that they should get their own house in order before they accuse us what about the untold stories of poor people living in poverty as their record out number ours in the UK.
I do agree that the US they need change just as much as we do but do not use our NHS to promote negative feelings as our NHS workers do a wonderful service. I put the questions to the people of the USA how many of your comrades comes to the UK to use our NHS each year!
The National Health Service has become the butt of increasingly outlandish political attacks in the US as Republicans and conservative campaigners rail against Britain's "socialist" system as part of a tussle to defeat Barack Obama's proposals for broader government involvement in healthcare.
Top-ranking Republicans have joined bloggers and well-funded free market organisations in scorning the NHS for its waiting lists and for "rationing" the availability of expensive treatments.
As myths and half-truths circulate, British diplomats in the US are treading a delicate line in correcting falsehoods while trying to stay out of a vicious domestic dogfight over the future of American health policy.
Slickly produced television advertisements trumpet the alleged failures of the NHS's 61-year tradition of tax-funded healthcare. To the dismay of British healthcare professionals, US critics have accused the service of putting an "Orwellian" financial cap on the value on human life, of allowing elderly people to die untreated and, in one case, for driving a despairing dental patient to mend his teeth with superglue.
Having seen his approval ratings drop, Obama is seeking to counter this conservative onslaught by taking his message to the public, with a "town hall" meeting today at a school in New Hampshire.
Last week, the most senior Republican on the Senate finance committee, Chuck Grassley, took NHS-baiting to a newly emotive level by claiming that his ailing Democratic colleague, Edward Kennedy, would be left to die untreated from a brain tumour in Britain on the grounds that he would be considered too old to deserve treatment.
"I don't know for sure," said Grassley. "But I've heard several senators say that Ted Kennedy with a brain tumour, being 77 years old as opposed to being 37 years old, if he were in England, would not be treated for his disease, because end of life – when you get to be 77, your life is considered less valuable under those systems."
The degree of misinformation is causing dismay in NHS circles. Andrew Dillon, chief executive of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), pointed out that it was utterly false that Kennedy would be left untreated in Britain: "It is neither true nor is it anything you could extrapolate from anything we've ever recommended to the NHS."
Others in the US have accused Obama of trying to set up "death panels" to decide who should live and who should die, along the lines of Nice, which determines the cost-effectiveness of NHS drugs.
One right-leaning group, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, lists horror stories about British care on its website. An email widely circulated among US voters, of uncertain origin, claims that anyone over 59 in Britain is ineligible for treatment for heart disease.
The British embassy in Washington is quietly trying to counter inaccuracies. A spokesman said: "We're keeping a close eye on things and where there's a factually wrong statement, we will take the opportunity to correct people in private. That said, we don't want to get involved in a domestic debate."
A $1.2m television advertising campaign bankrolled by the conservative Club for Growth displays images of the union flag and Big Ben while intoning a figure of $22,750. A voiceover says: "In England, government health officials have decided that's how much six months of life is worth. If a medical treatment costs more, you're out of luck."
The number is based on a ratio of £30,000 a year used by Nice in its assessment of whether drugs provide value for money. Dillon said this was one of many variables in determining cost-effectiveness of medicines. He said of his body's portrayal in the US: "It's very disappointing and it's not, obviously, the way in which Nice describes itself or the way in which we're perceived in the UK even among those who are disappointed or upset by our decisions."
On Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, the conservative commentator Sean Hannity recently alighted upon the case of Gordon Cook, a security manager from Merseyside, who used superglue to stick a loose crown into his gum because he was unable to find an NHS dentist. The cautionary tale, which was based on a Daily Mail report from 2006, prompted Hannity to warn his viewers: "If the Democrats have their way, get your superglue ready."
The broader tone of the US healthcare debate has become increasingly bitter. The former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin last week described president Obama's proposals as "evil", while the radio presenter Rush Limbaugh has compared a logo used for the White House's reform plans to a Nazi swastika. Hecklers have disrupted town hall meetings called to discuss the health reform plans.
David Levinthal, a spokesman for the nonpartisan Centre for Responsive Politics, said the sheer scale of the issue, which will affect the entire trajectory of US medical care, was arousing passions: "It's no surprise you have factions from every political stripe attempting to influence the debate and some of those groups are certainly playing to the deepest fears of Americans. There's been a great deal of documented disinformation propagated throughout the country." Defenders of Britain's system point out that the UK spends less per head on healthcare but has a higher life expectancy than the US. The World Health Organisation ranks Britain's healthcare as 18th in the world, while the US is in 37th place. The British Medical Association said a majority of Britain's doctors have consistently supported public provision of healthcare. A spokeswoman said the association's 140,000 members were sceptical about the US approach to medicine: "Doctors and the public here are appalled that there are so many people on the US who don't have proper access to healthcare. It's something we would find very, very shocking."
