WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s hopes for overhauling the U.S. health care system is likely to advance in the Senate next week now that a key panel has wrapped up months of work on a bill.

The most far-reaching overhaul in decades aims to protect millions who have unreliable insurance coverage or none at all in the only major industrialized country without universal health care.

A final, formal vote in the Senate Finance Committee was expected early next week. But Democrats hold a 13-10 majority on the panel, and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, anticipating the outcome, has already announced a historic debate will begin at mid-month in the full Senate.

It was well after midnight in the capital when Sen. Max Baucus, the Democrat who chairs the committee, announced work had been completed on all sections of the legislation. The bill is designed to expand insurance to millions who lack it, curb industry abuses and slow the growth of health care spending overall.

Obama, in a statement issued by the White House, praised the committee’s efforts and said “As a result of this work, we are now closer than ever before to finally passing reform that will offer security to those who have coverage and affordable insurance to those who don’t.”

The bill was written to appeal to Democratic moderates at least as much as the party’s more numerous liberals, a step Baucus said was the only way to amass the 60 votes needed in the Senate to avoid stalling tactics by opponents.

The bill also is the only one of several versions in circulation in Congress to have the hope of Republican support.

Republicans on the committee attacked the bill to the end as riddled with tax increases that violate Obama’s campaign pledges, but failed to remove any of them.

The measure, like a companion bill under construction in the House of Representatives, would bar insurance companies from denying coverage or charging higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. It also includes federal subsidies to make insurance available to millions who lack it, and it takes steps to slow the skyrocketing growth in health care costs nationwide.

Supporters said the overhaul’s cost was in the range that Obama has set, about $900 billion (€620 billion) over a decade, and would not raise federal deficits. Gradually, health care has grown to dwarf all other issues in Congress, and is causing supporters and opponents to spend more than $1 million (€700,000) a day on television advertising to sway the outcome.

Approval by the Finance Committee would clear the way for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to merge the bill with one approved earlier by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. One bill permits the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies, a provision referred to as a public option. The measure in the Finance Committee does not.

“I favor a public option. We’re going to do our very best to have a public option,” Reid said.

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Associated Press writers Erica Werner and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., smiles during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on health care reform legislation on Capitol Hill Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009, in Washington. Photo by AP

Evan Vucci