( serious impact on Australians' access ...)Australian Government Charged With Under-funding Public Hospitals,Health

serious impact on Australians' access to services and the quality of patient care," he said.

But Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott remains unfazed and says the report itself is politically motivated.

He contended that the $1.1 billion figure was incorrect and that the federal government was honoring all of its commitments under current health care funding agreements negotiated in 2003.

He said the report had been released by the states in an effort to boost the electoral fortunes of federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd.

"It's the state Labor governments ganging up on the federal government,'' Abbott told reporters outside his Sydney home.

"It's the state premiers and health ministers trying to give Kevin Rudd a bit of a leg up.''

It was up to the states to fix any problems in public hospitals, Abbott said.

"The states are simply recycling an argument that they've been running ever since 2003,'' he said.

Rudd himself declined to say what a federal Labor government would do to address the states' concerns.

"We won't give a commitment on precise numbers at this stage,'' he told the Nine Network.

"But we do recognize that there is a problem when it comes to, let's call it, the funding relationship between Canberra and the states when it comes to public hospitals.''

The report said that in August 2006, there were about 2,300 older people in public hospitals who should have been in an aged care facility.

Aged care is a federal responsibility and Rudd said more needed to be done to move people out of hospital and into appropriate nursing home-style accommodation.

The report also found the average out-of-pocket cost of seeing a GP has risen by about 60 per cent and the out-of-pocket cost of seeing a specialist has risen by 54 per cent over 10 years.

The current batch of health care agreements between the commonwealth and
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