As Congress forges ahead with massive health care overhaul legislation, one senator cautioned against more government involvement in any initiative.

Senate Democrats, led by Edward M. Kennedy , D-Mass., chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, are developing overhaul legislation that would require most Americans to have insurance and most employers to help pay for it, and would also require insurers to provide a basic level of coverage and limit their profits.

A Kennedy spokesman said June 5 that the legislation is “a draft of a draft” and said the committee was discussing options for an overhaul.

The text contains notes and questions by staff developing the bill, with many specifics left blank. The legislation makes reference to a government-run health plan that Democrats say they want to create, but the details of that highly controversial proposal are not fleshed out.

President Obama has spoken of a public health option and despite his opposition during the campaign, has indicated a willingness to consider mandates on individuals to get health insurance, on employers to pay for health insurance, as long as there’s a hardship waiver.

However, there are two things wrong with that approach, said Sen. Richard C. Shelby , R-Ala. “One, we don’t know how much it’s going to cost and who’s going to pay for it,” he said. “Secondly, it will be the first steps in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known.”

“When the government’s involved more and more in the details, and you start the one-pay deal, and you’ve got the government competing with private enterprise, with all the incentives government has and the power, they will destroy the marketplace for health care, and it will be a mistake, and the American people better be careful in what they want,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Also appearing on the program was White House economist Austan Goolsbee, who said Obama “has committed that he’s going to work with Congress, and so they have put forward a whole series of ideas that he’s willing to look at to do an achievable health care cost reduction and health care expansion for people who are uninsured.”

Goolsbee also took issue with comparing some of the administration’s health overhaul ideas to the plan touted by John McCain in the 2008 presidential race.

“It is not the president’s plan that he put forward,” Goolsbee said. “The second is in the campaign, the McCain proposal, as you describe in that ad, moved from ‘are the companies going to be paying taxes on the insurance?’ to then shifting to ‘let’s have the individuals pay tax on their health insurance.’ And the president — I don’t think it’s a secret that the president has been and will remain highly concerned about how ordinary Americans are able to foot ... their tax bills.”

White House adviser David Axelrod, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” said the availability of a public option for health care “is a positive thing. It will create the kind of additional competition that will help lower prices and give consumers a better deal.”

Responding to a question about Republican opposition to such an initiative, Axelrod said, “Everyone should be interested in health care reform. Health care costs are crushing families, crushing businesses, and ultimately it will crush the federal budget, as we’ve seen. These costs are growing way above the rate of inflation and have been for a very long time.

“So we need health reform. I think the American people know we need it,” he added. “And I would hope the people in both parties would get together. ... So I think we’ll be able to build bipartisan support for it, but we have to move forward with it. I think it is a critical situation for the country and our economy and our future.”