Health care coverage — and how to pay for it — dominated the Sunday talk shows, with key Senate leaders expounding on a variety of initiatives.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., warned of overhaul efforts that would result in “putting Washington between you and your doctor” and said the focus should be on improving the existing health care system.

“We already have the best health care in the world. We know it costs a lot, but we have the best health care in the world,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And I don’t think many Americans want to start having to, you know, wait in line and start getting government permission for procedures. We need to be very careful about taking the wrong steps.”

On the same program, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin , D-Ill., countered that “the current system is unsustainable. There are talking points on the other side of the aisle about creating some fear of change and what this might mean. ... the president has said — we’ve all said — if you like your current health care insurance, your plan, you’re going to be able to keep it. But we need to fix some things in the system. The costs are out of control.”

In his weekly radio address, President Obama outlined a series of Medicare and Medicaid cuts he said would slice $313 billion in payments over 10 years so the savings could be applied toward overhauling the health system.

The cuts come on top of Medicare and Medicaid revisions Obama requested earlier this year in his fiscal 2010 budget proposal; together with those cuts the White House is now proposing a total of $622 billion in Medicare and Medicaid revisions over 10 years, most of it from Medicare.

Durbin said Obama’s plan to overhaul the health system would reduce premiums and add more people to health care rolls — resulting in a net effect of lowering costs.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Congress is more likely to support requiring individuals to buy health insurance than mandating coverage through employers.

“There isn’t anything wrong with it, except some people look at it as an infringement upon individual freedom,” he said. “But when it comes to states requiring it for automobile insurance, the principle then ought to lie the same way for health insurance, because everybody has some health insurance costs, and if you aren’t insured, there’s no free lunch. Somebody else is paying for it.

Taxing Benefits

Among Democrats, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana has been the strongest advocate of removing the tax exclusion on employer-paid health benefits, a plan unpopular with labor unions and many liberal Democrats. Obama criticized a related proposal by Sen. John McCain , R-Ariz., during the 2008 presidential race.

Grassley, the top Republican on the panel, said the initiative is possible “but it’s going to take the president of the United States, who made a big deal out of McCain so-called increasing taxes — and the McCain plan was a very good plan, but the president drove it into the ground, won the election.

“It looks like he’s looking at doing similar to what McCain wanted to do,” Grassley added, “and I think for the benefit of making this bipartisan, presidential leadership in this area would be very good based upon the tune of the last campaign.”