Healthcare reform faces challenges in U.S. Senate

By Kevin Drawbaugh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's U.S. healthcare overhaul plan has cleared an important Senate hurdle but lawmakers warned on Sunday of challenges ahead in winning support for passage, even among Obama's own Democrats.

On Saturday, Senate Democrats gathered the 60 votes needed to open floor debate on the plan, which would make the biggest changes in the $2.5 trillion (1.5 trillion pounds) healthcare system in 40 years. It is the Obama administration's top domestic policy initiative.

No Republicans backed the procedural motion and a handful of conservative Democrats, whose votes were crucial, supported the floor debate but remained uncommitted to the bill itself.

One of those was Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, who said on Sunday that he could not support the plan without big changes.

"If there are a whole host of other items that are the same as they are right now, I wouldn't vote to get it off the floor," Nelson said on the ABC's "This Week" news program.

Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman, usually an ally of the majority Democrats, said he could not support the bill either if the "public option" -- for a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private firms -- stays in the bill.

"I don't think anybody feels this bill ... will pass" as written, Lieberman said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.

Debate will begin on November 30 and is expected to last at least three weeks.