If you want a fine example of cruel irony, how about the long-awaited opening of a new Family Health Center clinic in East Waco last week, offering medical and dental services for some of Waco’s most impoverished neighborhoods — and just as our leaders in Washington, D.C., contemplate devastating cuts to Medicaid and community health center funding that could cripple and close such facilities nationwide.

Folks should not be surprised that Medicaid, a federal-state program that provides health care for the poor, is under attack in ongoing talks about raising the $14.3 trillion national debt ceiling. In the sphere of entitlement reform, Medicaid represents the easiest target, primarily because its constituents are the impoverished who may not be savvy enough to even know how to contact their congressman.

In short, unlike those of us who might benefit from Medicare or Social Security — and are prepared to raise the roof with lawmakers who dare propose revamping those popular entitlement programs — precious few will stand up for the poor. They’re the perfect target for lawmakers without conscience because there’s little or no political fallout. Plus, the poor are so easy for the rest of us to stereotype, even disparage.

Allen Patterson, Family Health Center chief financial and operating officer, says the issue is a serious one that could find more people flooding hospital emergency rooms for care, especially if health centers like the clinics run by Family Health Center are defunded enough to start closing.

What’s more, if the poor start showing up at hospitals for treatment, it may be only after they have let some malady worsen to the point that what a simple shot or pill could have cost-effectively cured days or weeks earlier will now require a hospital stay and much more extensive treatment — and far more expense for those of us who pay taxes and have health insurance.

Add to this yet others in need who have lost jobs in this anemic economy and the fact health center costs are 10 times less than average per-capita spending on health care, and you have to question the logic of such cuts. I personally wonder why the pro-life lobby hasn’t cried out; nearly half the babies in our county are delivered by the Family Health Center, whose low costs help encourage one to choose life.

The problem is well worth our attention in Waco, considering our widespread poverty. Patterson says Family Health Center clinics treated about 49,000 individuals last year, representing about 234,000 visits. Many of these are not necessarily jobless folks but the working poor, the backbone of our community — and themselves a paycheck or two from being out on the streets.

Patterson estimates 70 percent of the funds to keep the Family Health Center up and running in Waco come from about 45 percent of the patients who have Medicaid benefits. Along with a far smaller number of patients on Medicare who, like some Medicaid patients, can’t get regular doctors to treat them, these funds allow the clinics to treat the 38 percent of patients who have no insurance whatsoever.

If the White House and lawmakers cut Medicaid and community health center funding, clinics like Waco’s will have to increase the number of Medicaid patients and cut the number of people who come in without any insurance, largely leaving them to hospital emergency rooms. And if the nation’s leaders halve combined funding for such clinics, many will close nationwide, Patterson says. That would include Waco’s within a year or so.

This development comes as the Family Health Center, which has a $38 million annual budget, is opening several new facilities around town to treat our huge population of poor. That’s why the center is urging supporters and clients to contact lawmakers to prevent devastating cuts.

It’s a striking indication of how greatly political stances have changed. President George W. Bush doubled funding for community health centers on his watch, a reflection of his fierce admiration for the cost-effective health care they provided that neatly fit his unique brand of “compassionate conservatism.”

Alas, few leaders have such compassion and conservatism today — and in the long run it may cost us all as a people.