Nicola Sturgeon has said Gordon Brown was warned ahead of the 2014 independence referendum that the NHS could be threatened by creeping privatisation.
The First Minister told a press conference in Edinburgh today she "absolutely" agreed with a newspaper column written by the former Labour leader on the future of the health service.
Brown said senior Conservatives were "testing the water for a different kind of NHS" which could see the public charged for some services.
It came after Sajid Javid, a former UK health secretary, claimed in an interview last week the NHS could not "survive much longer" without radical change - including introducing patient charges.
Sturgeon said that while control of the health service in Scotland was devolved to Holyrood, any decision to introduce charges by Westminster would have a "knock-on effect".
And she pointed to comments made by Brown in 2014 which poured scorn on claims by the Yes campaign at the time that the NHS would be vulnerable in the wake of a No vote.
Responding to a question from the Record, the SNP leader said: "I absolutely agree with Gordon Brown that the Tories, right now, present a real and present danger to the National Health Service.
"I think Sajid Javid's comments were appalling and alarming, although not entirely surprising.
"I find it hard to believe that a former health secretary was flying a kite like that completely on his own accord. There is a hint that, at the very least, there is an active debate within the Conservative party about moving down that road."
Sturgeon said that if England was to pursue a policy of charging for certain types of care it would have "a knock-on effect" on budgets in Scotland and other devolved administrations.
She added: "If the public funding of the NHS in England either declines, or doesn't rise as much as it would otherwise do, the Barnett Formula means there is a very real budget implication for Scotland."
The First Minister continued: "The final point I would make about Gordon Brown's comments is I well remember making this argument, and raising these concerns in the run-up to the independence referendum in 2014
"And I also remember Gordon Brown calling it baseless scaremongering. I think he threatened to return to frontline politics if we didn't withdraw this terrible smear
"So, Gordon Brown is right to be raising these concerns and I'm glad he's now seeing what we were warning about all these years ago - that the NHS is not safe in the hands of the Conservatives."
Speaking in the days before the 2014 independence referendum, Brown said he would return to frontline politics if then first minister Alex Salmond refused to admit the future of the NHS was entirely in the hands of the Scottish Parliament.
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