A Kent Conservative Euro MP has sparked an international war of words after saying he would not wish the NHS on any country.

He claimed people in America get much better treatment.

Daniel Hannan made his comments during a television interview in America, which he is visiting. Plans by President Obama to shake-up the health care system in the USA have sparked a major political row there.

Now even Gordon Brown has joined the debate, with a Downing Street comment on Twitter.

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And Tory leader David Cameron has spoken out against his colleague, and in favour of the NHS.

In the interview, Mr Hannan, who is a well-known commentator for the Daily Telegraph and has been an MEP since 1999, was asked whether America should adopt a health care system similar to the NHS.

He replied: "I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. We have a system where the most salient factors of it are: you get huge waiting lists; you have bad survival rates; you would much rather fall ill in the US than in the UK. You know if you get cancer, if you get heart disease, you get stroke, five years on the chances are here you are going to be healthy - in the UK you are not."

He went on to say the UK was stuck with the system because there was "such a huge vested interest" and it employed so many people.

"We have 1.4 million employees in the NHS in the United Kingdom. It’s the third biggest employer in the world after the Chinese Red Army and the Indian national railways. And that means that electorally it’s almost impossible to get rid of the thing."

He emphasised he was not criticising health professionals who worked in the NHS.

"I don’t want to imply that because we have a bad system it doesn’t contain good people. A lot of very generous, very patriotic people become doctors, even though they’re working in a system that doesn’t maximise their utility, because they have a calling to help other people."

But he said America should be wary of adopting any system based on the NHS.

"Don’t think that you can experiment with one of these things and then reverse it if it doesn’t work out. That’s not how it happens."It was a matter of fact that "we have many fewer GPs per head of population than [you have] in north America or indeed than they have in the insurance based systems in continental Europe."

It is not the first time that Mr Hannan has criticised the NHS. Earlier this year, he appeared Fox News in the USA and described it as a ‘60 year mistake and that it made people ill.

• What do you think? Is our health system as bad as Mr Hannan says? Should we adopt a more American-style system - or are you proud of our NHS? Join the debate by clicking on the Make a Comment tab below.