Fed Labor push for public hospital funding

Federal Labor is renewing its push for the Turnbull government to increase its share of public hospital funding.

The opposition launched a fresh pitch on Wednesday for state hospitals to receive half their budgets from the federal government.

The coalition put a new deal on the table at the last Council of Australian Governments' meeting, offering 45 per cent of the funds out to 2025, while keeping annual growth in federal spending capped at 6.5 per cent.

It matched the arrangement agreed to by states in April 2016, which at that time restored some of the money former prime minister Tony Abbott tried to cut.

New South Wales and Western Australia signed up, but other states remain unconvinced.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has launched a new campaign in Gladstone on Wednesday warning this amounts to a $715 million cut to public hospitals between 2017 and 2020.

In a joint statement with Labor health spokeswoman Catherine King, Mr Shorten said this was the equivalent of 2010 nursing jobs a year, 198,000 cataract extractions or 27,000 knee replacements.

The pair accused Mr Turnbull of being "happy" to give big business a tax cut of $65 billion while not properly funding public hospitals.

Liberal frontbencher Anne Ruston contested Labor's claim that government arrangements amounted to a $715 million cut.

"I won't be lectured to by this Labor (opposition) about so-called cuts when we know darn well that they wouldn't know how to add up anything," she told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

But crossbench senator Derryn Hinch supported any move to increase funding for public hospitals.

"I guess you'd call me a capitalist, but I'm a socialist in one area and that's when it comes to medicine, health and public hospitals," he said.