Public Medicare to be set in stone: Labor

Labor has pledged to set in stone the public ownership of Medicare by making it law.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and his health spokeswoman Catherine King have promised to introduce legislation to prevent Medicare ever being privatised within 100 days if Labor forms government after the July 2 election.

"The repeated threats to Medicare posed by the Abbott-Turnbull government make such an unprecedented step necessary," they said in a joint statement on Tuesday.