Radical changes to the NHS could benefit everyone, according to a patients’ rights campaigner.

Jean Spain believes the proposals may drive down prices – meaning money can be spent elsewhere.

Under plans included in the Health and Social Care Bill, currently working its way through Parliament, the government wants to change the way care is provided and paid for.

This could include private firms taking over key health services and GPs paying for and commissioning care.

Mrs Spain, group co-ordinator of the Sheppey and Sittingbourne Patients’ Group, says although people are concerned about the bill, she believes a lot of good could come from it.

She said: “My view is if the services can be provided by somebody else, providing the NHS is still paying for it, it’s still an NHS.

“For example, physiotherapy. You can go to the high street and pay, say £37 for half an hour, yet the NHS ones are more expensive, and I really think what the NHS should be doing is going for the most cost-effective service.

“That will release money for services the NHS is the best provider for and does very well in – like accident and emergency.

“So this may drive down NHS prices to provide services. Having said that of course, there’s nothing to say any private provider might gradually increase their prices, but that’s the nature of the beast.”

Mrs Spain is less supportive of GPs commissioning services.

She said: “I think GPs are GPs – they shouldn’t do managing and accounting; they should do what they do best and I feel that’s the way things should be.”

In a letter to the Times Guardian last week, MP Gordon Henderson said: “We [Britain] have financial pressures, the increasing cost of drugs and an ageing population, all of which threaten to undermine a truly national health service.

“If the coalition government does not meet those challenges today, future generations of patients will face a health care crisis.

“I would not have supported the bill if I thought it in any way threatened an NHS free at the point of use and based on need and not the ability to pay.”