Heath and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell warned Republicans' plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act will bring "chaos."
Burwell, during a Wednesday appearance on CNN, said repealing President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law will disrupt the coverage of millions of Americans, as well as creating a spike in premium costs and uncertainty in the insurance market.
"If there is repeal, there would be chaos," Burwell said during an interview at a Newark, N.J., diner. "If your child is on your policy 'til 26, and it's repealed, that goes away. If you have a pre-existing condition – asthma, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, any of those things – you could be kept off of insurance if you had to make a move or a transition or were unemployed for a portion of time.
"The 20 million folks who have gotten insurance – that would go away too," she added.
Twenty million individuals have gained insurance through Obamacare, and according to CNN, policy experts agree untangling the 7-year-old system would be a long and difficult process.
"It is a difficult task and our system is one where when you move one piece, it's related to another piece," she said, warning of a domino effect on the healthcare system. "It's like a Jenga puzzle. And if you pull a piece out, you can make the thing tumble."
"'Repeal and delay,'" as Washington-insiders call the plan Republicans have suggested, putting off the repeal's effect for as much as three years, "is a repeal and recipe for collapse."
"Insurance companies have to make their decisions in the first half of the year – whether or not they're going to be in the marketplace and what prices they're going to charge," she said. "With that level of uncertainty, we've seen studies and more and more analysis is coming out that what insurance companies will do – many of them – will make the choice to be out of the marketplace or else to raise their prices dramatically.
"It actually goes even further than repealing," she said. "Right now, 11 million seniors have benefited $23 billion – that's something the congressman's plan wants to take away.
"The other thing is, the congressman has proposals on Medicare and the employer-based market that would do things that would potentially increase costs for individuals in those markets."
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