Conservative leader David Cameron has said he wants his party - the party of Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill - to "replace Labour as the party of the NHS".
He has criticised Labour's handling of the national health provider, saying a Tory government would ensure "medical professionals recover their professional freedom".
But analysts say the Conservatives have yet to offer coherent policies on public services, and must prove themselves if they are to win the next election, which is due by May 2010.
PATIENTS AND POLITICS
The political wrangling that accompanies almost every mention of reform for the health service, as well as a predicted economic downturn, could stall improvements and development. Some analysts say the fact that the NHS is funded by taxpayers, or voters, means it is always going to be a political football.
"Funding through income tax means inevitably that the NHS is intensely politicized and run by politicians," said Richard Smith, a heart and lung specialist who wrote a commentary on the NHS in the Journal of the Royal Medical Society.
"And politicians have a time horizon that is far too short for the systematic improvement that a health system needs."
When the NHS was launched in 1948, it had a budget of 437 million pounds - a figure that has now ballooned to more than 90 billion pounds last year.
According to a crude calculation by the government's department for health, that NHS budget equates to spending 1,500 pounds for every man, woman and child in the UK.
The government has pledged to increase this budget by around 4 percent in real terms in the coming years - bringing total spending to around 110 billion pounds by 2010/2011.
But Britain's population is getting bigger, and older, with some projections cited by the King's Fund suggesting that by 2066 the NHS's 60 million users will have become 82 million, and more than 25 percent of them will be over 65 years old.
The rise in demand - to cater for an ageing population, their rising expectations for healthy lives, and for expensive new drugs and technologies - means Britons must shift their thinking on the NHS and be open about the cost, analysts say.
International comparisons between health-care systems are notoriously difficult, but in broad terms, the NHS is often viewed negatively in comparison with France's system of social insurance, and as a picture of perfection in comparison with the U.S. system, funded largely by private medical insurance.
John Appleby, a health economist at the King's Fund, cites a 2000 study by the World Health Organisation which ranked the NHS 18th out of the 191 health-care systems analysed.
France came top, and the U.S. health system, which then spent a higher portion of its gross domestic product on health than any other country, came 37th.
Oscar-winning director Michael Moore memorably compared the two in his 2007 documentary "SiCKO", which details the painful stories of Americans who say they were denied life-saving treatment by insurers or forced to forgo emergency treatment at hospitals because they could not afford to pay.
As counterpoints, Moore toured Canada, Britain and France and feigns amazement when confronted with evidence that those national health-care systems provide better basic care.
That comparison rings true to many in Britain.
"To us in Britain, the United States is a failure standard - if you are poor, you really get very bad health care," said Furness. "But we are right at the other end of the scale. We try to pretend the issue of money in health care doesn't even exist."
