Shelby: Obama will destroy 'best health care system the world has ever known'

(Politico) - Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" that President Barack Obama's proposed health care plan is the "first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known."

"When the government is involved more and more in the details," Shelby said, "and you start the one-pay deal and you got the government competing with private enterprise with all the incentives the government has and the power, they can destroy the marketplace for health care and it will be a mistake and the American people better be careful in what they want."

When confronted by Wallace over why the president has had a seeming reversal from his campaign to now on the prospect of taxing health care benefits, White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee took issue.

"The care exclusion as they call it," Goolsbee said, "that was not in the president's plan. Now, the president has committed he is going to work with Congress, and so they have put forward a whole series of ideas he’s willing to look at to do an achievable health care cost reduction and health care expansion for people who are uninsured. But that’s not the president's plan. So I think it’s a little unfair to attribute to the president things he did not put forward."