ALBANY, N.Y. — Reaction to congressional plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act came swiftly Thursday from New York's healthcare advocates and liberal policy groups.

Banding together inside the State Capitol, Citizen Action of New York was joined by the New York State Nurses Association, the Fiscal Policy Institute, 1199 SEIU and a handful of Democrat Assembly members, ripping the new Republican Congress for failing to propose a viable substitute for the national health care law.

"This is not just a political talking point. People's lives are at stake," said Bob Cohen, policy director for Citizen Action. "We are distressed, disturbed and outraged."

One of those in attendance was Tracey Everett, a single mother of four children from Troy who works as a certified nursing assistant.

"Before the ACA, I was in a situation where I had a pre-existing condition because I had a brain tumor, a seizure disorder," Everett explained Thursday. "Being that I had a pre-existing condition, it was very hard for me to get coverage."

Everett is now insured under the act's provision that prevents companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. But Everett worries that the health care law will now be repealed and replaced by a lesser government insurance plan — or worse, no plan at all.

"If I didn't have Obamacare, how would I have fed the kids?" Everett said. "How would I have paid my medical bills?"

Morover, New York would likely suffer a budget hole from the loss of federal health care funding. According to a release from Governor Cuomo's office on Wednesday, that loss of funding would mean health care cuts for 2.7 million New Yorkers currently served by the Affordable Care Act.

"We could be looking at a loss of somewhere in the area of $3.9 billion to $4.3 billion in federal funds," said Ron Deutsch, who studies such funding streams with the Fiscal Policy Institute.

Assembly Democrats place the blame at the feet of Republicans as a whole.

Time Warner Cable News reached out to a number of Republicans in the Assembly and Senate on Thursday, but none would venture to comment.