The two main bodies representing doctors in the ACT have warned that patients will end up paying for a new tax which the ACT government says GP practices must pay.
The Royal Australian College of GPs and the Australian Medical Association said that "GPs will have little option but to pass the additional tax on to patients".
That, they claim, could be through longer waiting times to see a doctor. Fewer nurses would mean more people going to emergency departments at the hospitals when GPs could treat people's ailments and illnesses more effectively.
They also believe that bills to patients would rise.
"The bottom line is that practices don't have the capacity to absorb this additional payroll tax so the cost of this measure is going to have to be passed on to patients," Dr Kerrie Aust, the incoming president of the AMA in the ACT, said.
"And it's going to make access to general practice even harder so there'll be more wait times. It'll be harder to see the GP. Hours may be reduced. We may not be able to continue to have our nursing staff which will mean less access when people need it most."
Trainee GP Betty Ge said that fewer people would come into the profession. "We already have difficulty attracting enough trainees into the training program so that's already a quite desperate situation in Canberra, and this will further create financial instability in general practice," she said.
In the past GPs have not been seen as employees of a practice but as contractors to it, renting space in the clinic.
But a court decision in the NSW Supreme Court ruled that they were employees and, therefore, were subject to payroll tax. The tax was due to come in this coming Thursday. The court's ruling applied to all states, but NSW, South Australian and Queensland have introduced amnesty periods.
The ACT government has offered an exemption for two years to practices which bulk bill 65 per cent of their patients.
But, the doctors argue, very few practices in Canberra would be exempt under this criterion.
How many is a matter of dispute. The two medical bodies say the tax would affect all but a "small minority" of clinics in the ACT.
The Liberal opposition to the government said the clinics which would be affected are the larger ones so the tax imposition would affect thousands of patients.
On Friday, ACT Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee revealed her plan to introduce a bill and called on the government to support it.
"It is up to Andrew Barr to step up and take leadership to provide certainty to our GPs, their clinics and patients and take this step to ensure that Canberrans aren't going to be paying more to access essential health care," she said.
Health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith called the Liberals' threat to introduce legislation a "stunt".
Earlier, Chief Minister Andrew Barr said the government's temporary exemption for some clinics would give them time "to align with payroll tax requirements".
