Foreigners face being charged around £200-a-year for using the NHS in an attempt to tackle so-called health tourism.
Ministers will outline plans to introduce the charge for foreign workers and students who come to the UK for more than half a year.
The Department of Health said it would make sure migrants contributed towards healthcare costs without adding to NHS red tape.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is expected to announce a public consultation on the move as part of a raft of changes to immigration laws.
He will say: "We need to ensure that those residing or visiting the UK are contributing to the system in the same way as British taxpayers, and ensure we do as much as possible to target illegal migration.
"We have been clear that we are a national health service - not an international health service - and I am determined to wipe out abuse in the system.
"The NHS is a national treasure and we need to work with the entire health system to develop plans and make sure it is sustainable for years to come."
He will also outline plans to end free access to GPs for short-term visitors and pledge to cut the bill for treating tourists, which currently stands at £200m.
But he has already made clear foreign patients would not be refused treatment in an emergency. In those cases, efforts to recoup the money would be made later.
The changes are part of a Government-wide push to cut down on abuse of British services, but doctors warned they feared becoming a "form of immigration control".
Clare Gerada, chair of the Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: "I don't think we should be turning the GP surgery into a border agency."
Dr Gerada also warned immigrants with highly infectious conditions could end up "wandering around for fear of being charged" or going to more expensive emergency units, which could cost more.
And she accused the Government of failing to "find the facts" about the actual cost of NHS use by immigrants and launching a "rushed consultation".
"We need to make sure that what comes out the other end is sensible, proportionate and fair and doesn't cost us all much more money and put us at much more risk than the current situation which is one that, even at the worst estimates, is a tiny proportion of NHS costs," she said.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister David Cameron said immigrants could not expect "something for nothing" in the UK.
But shadow health minister Liz Kendall said: "In its three years in power, the Government has a poor record on announcing policies that sound good, but prove to be completely unworkable.
"We will have many questions to ask about the details when they are published, but the key tests for their proposals are: can they be properly enforced and will they save more money than they cost to put in place?
"The public and NHS staff must be confident that any new measures are about getting taxpayers a better deal and ensuring fairness, not playing politics with our NHS."
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