Sussan Ley may lose her job as health minister over her use of travel allowances but far worse for her constituents is her health policy. I know. I live in her electorate.

The electorate of Farrer is located in south-west New South Wales. It’s the second largest in the state, some 120,000 sq km; only Parkes in the north is bigger. It is rural and conservative. The median weekly household income is $935.

Since its creation in 1949 it has been held by only four MPs, all from the conservative side of politics: three Liberals and a National. It is so “safe” for the Coalition that when the Labor candidate withdrew before the election he wasn’t even replaced. As of 2001, it has been held by Sussan Ley.

Crossbenchers pledge to reform expenses as Sussan Ley scandal widens Read more

Given the party’s long history with the region and Ley’s 15-year tenure as its MP you would assume the electorate’s particular issues would be well known. Being a rural electorate bordered in the south by the Murray River you would be correct in assuming one of the top issues is irrigation and water rights – and the be-hatted Barnaby Joyce has done a good job representing those interests in the media.

The other, less remarked upon, and arguably more pressing issue is healthcare. You can’t farm when you are dead, as the saying goes. It’s a well-known and regrettable fact that people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, a category to which most rural Australians belong, have worse health outcomes than their city cousins. Why then, is the government, with a health minister with a rural background, intent on making healthcare less affordable to those already struggling?

When the $5 Medicare co-payment was scrapped after being widely derided as unfairly targeting the poor, the government sought to maintain the spending cut that went with it by freezing the GP rebate. It was revealed in November that this freeze resulted in a drop in bulk billing rates.

Reliable bulking billing can be the difference between affording to go to the doctor and not, doubly so for people with chronic illness or those on a limited income such as the pension and disability payments or Newstart.

I have muscular dystrophy, a muscle weakening disease that, among other things, means that I need to use a wheelchair. It also means that in my 32 years, I’ve had hundreds of doctor visits and appointments across the entire spectrum of the health system. I know what’s it like to travel for hours to see specialists in the city because they simply do not exist in my electorate. I also know that to even get a appointment with a specialist you must be referred by a GP. Which means another appointment.

Knowing this makes these cuts to frontline services even more egregious. More expensive GP visits coupled with the fact rural people, particularly men, are less likely to go to the doctor early, hints at a looming health crisis in Farrer and electorates like it.

However, to say the savings being made in health unfairly target the poor is to only see half of the picture. More troubling is where these savings are being made, not just at the bottom end, but at the frontline: preventative health.

The two most recent and visible of the many changes to health have been the removal of blood sugar testing strips from the PBS and the increased cost of pap smears. The sugar testing strips are mostly used by those with diet-controlled diabetes. Diabetes overwhelming affects those from low socio-economic backgrounds; it is especially prevalent in Indigenous Australians. The other recent change is government funding for pathology services needed for pap smears will be cut, and those amounts will likely be passed on to women. Poor women. The savings rely on it.

The position of the health minister and her government is that savings must be made in health and they have decided to achieve this by pricing the poor out of GP services and preventative health.

Fiona the Unemployed Bettong visits Centrelink to discuss her debt notice | First Dog on the Moon Read more

Should Ley meet her downfall, it should not be because of dodgy travel expenses or socialist conspiracy, as fellow public money spendthrift Bronwyn Bishop has suggested. Nor even for the policies she introduced as health minister – some other Liberal health minister would be equally bad.

No, her downfall should come from assuming her seat is so safe that her constituents can be ignored and taken for granted. It should be for assuming that our health – my health, the health of the people I know – can be chiseled away without consequence.

The people of Farrer live with Ley’s decisions, and increasingly we die with them. Sure, dropping $800,000 on an impulse apartment purchase looks bad, and it is. But it looks even worse when you’re standing in line to drop $60 for the sugar strips that keep you alive.

It’s hard to be even angry. You can only get angry at the unexpected. Anyone paying attention saw this coming. GPs and the AMA warned us but they were ignored. People of the Farrer electorate know what that’s like. So I’m not angry. Besides, anger – much like this government – is bad for your health.