Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has promised nobody will pay more to see the doctor as a result of the Coalition's extended freeze on Medicare rebates, even as GPs prepare to charge patients co-payments for the first time. 
Instead he blamed clinicians for any hefty fee rises and argued the forgone rebate amounted to only 60Â¢ a consultation and extra rises were commercial decisions. The freeze would fund other health priorities.
Asked on Friday by Sunrise host Samantha Armytage if he could guarantee the program's viewers would not pay more to see their GPs because of the freeze, Mr Turnbull replied: "Absolutely."
He later told reporters: "Doctors can charge what they like. If a doctor chooses to charge his or her patients $15 or $10 more or $20 more, that's not because indexation has not resumed - it's because they want to charge $15 or $20 more.
"He or she may attribute that higher charge to whatever they like, but they cannot credibly attribute it to not getting an extra 60Â¢ this year."
Mr Turnbull also reminded voters the bulk-billing rate was at a record high.
The prime minister's stance is at odds with medical groups that have fought against the freeze in television and radio advertisements throughout the election campaign.
Australian Medical Association president Michael Gannon warned that some GPs were preparing to abandon bulk-billing - where patients' Medicare rebates are accepted as full payment without any out-of-pocket fee - on Friday,   July 1.
Doctors had accepted fees that were lower than their true value long before Labor first froze indexation for eight months in 2013, Dr Gannon said. Labor lifted it for GPs in 2014-15. The Coalition then re-introduced the freeze for four years in 2014, and this year surprised doctors by extending it a further two years to 2020, to save $925.3 million.
"They can't run their small business at the [current] level of the patient rebate," Dr Gannon said.
While the bulk-billing rate has continued to rise to about 83 per cent for out-of-hospital services, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners estimates this will fall as a direct result of the extended freeze. Sixty one per cent of 545 doctors surveyed said they would start increasing their fees to patients or privately bill all of them.
"This means up to 14.5 million Australians will either have to start paying upfront, or pay more, which will be a disaster for the disadvantaged and those on low incomes in rural and metropolitan areas," the college's president Frank Jones has said.
Only 9 per cent of doctors surveyed said they would continue to bulk-bill all their patients.
Labor has pledged to lift the freeze if elected. Labor leader Bill Shorten said Mr Turnbull's pledge was a "new low" in the Coalition's campaign, describing it as "untruthful" and "outrageous".