Carrie Smarczewski choked up and began to weep as she described the fear she and other Medicaid recipients at Crossroads Clubhouse in Warren began to feel in February when potential cuts were first announced.

“Everybody who was at Crossroads got really scared and nervous,” Smarzcewski said. “A month after the president got in office, and now he’s talking about cutting Medicaid. Everyone got so upset.”

Smarczewski of Fraser spoke at a roundtable discussion Tuesday staged by Protect MI Care Coalition that featured 16 government officials, Medicaid recipients, a hospital official and a Crossroads official in the Macomb Intermediate School District building on Garfield Road in Clinton Township. About 20 additional representatives of other organizations watched and spoke from the audience, and others observed over Zoom.

It was held in response to President Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” which passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is now in the Senate and lays out Medicaid cuts to save the federal government $700 billion a year to help fund extension of $4 billion in tax cuts over the next 10 years that were instituted during his first term.

“The assault on health care is real. The assault on our community is real,” said Deidra Wilson, senior vice president of government relations and public policy for McLaren Health Care. “They (members of congress) absolutely need to know … these are real lives. These aren’t just numbers, statistics.”

Shelley Petty of Sterling Heights said she and her husband rely on Medicaid for the around-the-clock care for their 23-year-old disabled daughter who is nonverbal, cognitively impaired, “medically fragile” and a wheelchair user. She’s also is a “fighter” and a social and “fun” person who can live “her best life” with the help of the federal benefits, Petty said.

“I just don’t know how long we would survive physically caring for her without the help we receive from Medicaid,” she said, noting they also support two teen children. “We would not be able to pay for that out-of-pocket for very long without losing our home and our livelihood.

“How many other families are like mine? There are thousands. We must keep fighting. We must do everything we can to stop these drastic and devastating cuts that will cripple so many families, individuals with disabilities, the elderly, veterans and everyone who relies on Medicaid to survive.”

Several others, including those who receive benefits for themselves and those who care for their disabled child, related their experiences of their dependence on Medicaid for their physical and mental well-being and survival.

One-quarter of Michigan residents, or 2.6 million people, including about 30% of children, benefit from Medicaid, according to multiple sources. The state Department of Health and Human Services reported in May that over 700,000 people, “including people fighting cancer, seniors in nursing homes, new moms, veterans, kids, and those living with disabilities could lose their health care” under the proposal, said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Ilona Kwiek, director of the Friendship Clubhouse in Harrison Township, said she has been advocating for and working with adults who are “managing their mental health” for 25 years and that, “Every year I grow more weary, my heart breaks more.”

“I’m so disappointed we grow more as a community tolerant of, ‘It’s OK, we can give tax breaks to these billionaires. We’ll just make ourselves somehow smaller. We’ll do more with less.’ We can’t do more with less. There is no more less.”

The Friendship Clubhouse is used by about 30 adults and the Crossroads Clubhouse works with about 120 people with mental illness to work, socialize and receive support, according to the clubhouses’ directors. The facilities and participants are fully or nearly fully dependent on Medicaid, operators said.

Crossroads Clubhouse is part of a chain of 40 facilities statewide used by 4,000 people, according to Warren Crossroads Director Bruce Dunton.

When the Medicaid bill passed the House last month, House Speaker Mike Johnson said it and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP) are not being cut but are being “drained by fraud, waste and abuse” and that will be reduced to account for the less funding. Politico reported early this month the White House claims the cuts would “chiefly target undocumented immigrants and able-bodied people” who should work and not receive Medicaid.

Lisa Lepine, executive director of the nonprofit organization The Arc of Macomb County, called it “hurtful … to suggest this community is abusing” the system.

“If anybody understood how hard it is to get eligible for Medicaid, if they spent any time at all, if they spent any time helping someone apply, they would understand it is an incredibly difficult system to manage,” she said. “These families struggle. It is not an easy program to use. The idea that fraud, waste and abuse is occurring for people who rely on it to be in their community, to be independent and to be treated as if they’re valued, I’ll use the term ludicrous.”

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the 2024 improper payment rate for Medicaid was 5.09%, a drop from 8.58% in 2023 and 21.69% in 2021.

“Nearly 75% of those 2024 ‘errors’ were due to missing documentation, not because the payment was illegitimate, but because paperwork wasn’t saved properly,” said Angela Minicuci, a spokeswoman for the Protect MI Care Coalition. “Eligibility-related errors, such as verification steps not being properly documented, made up only 3.31% of the total rate.”

Wilson and Andrew Cox, director of Macomb County Health and Community Services, indicated the proponents of the cuts were ignorant of who receives Medicaid.

“I don’t think they had a good understanding of who’s on Medicaid, who they really represent because it’s your grocery store clerk, it’s your neighbor, it’s your kid,” Wilson said. “It is the cornerstone of how we are providing care to the most vulnerable people in our community. We are cutting care to our most vulnerable individuals.”

McLaren operates 13 hospitals in Michigan, including in Mount Clemens, Pontiac, Port Huron, Lapeer and Mount Pleasant.

Health care officials have said the cuts would especially harm health care in rural areas, including the closure of hospitals.

Cox and Wilson said they also are worried about the increased burden that will be placed on all hospitals for a myriad of services.

“It’s a ripple effect once you take one piece away, it has drastic impacts to the whole health-care system, public health care system as we know it,” Cox said. “We’ll see more individuals that have delayed care or don’t have access to care now showing up at our ER’s that are already taxed as it is.”

Wilson added, “I am here to stress this is about all communities, because when you’re taking these kinds of Draconian cuts, you’re putting hospital systems in the position of making very difficult decisions about the service lines that they can provide. If those have to be cut, that’s everybody. That’s not just Medicaid.”