WASHINGTON (AP):

President Barack Obama's vow to reform the United States health-care system cleared a key hurdle yesterday with a bonus vote from a moderate Republican whose backing could be key to final passage.

Members of the 23-member Senate finance committee voted 14-9 to approve the legislation, setting up a historic debate on the Senate floor and moving health-care overhaul closer to reality than it has been for decades.

The measure meets most of the requirements set out by Obama, who promised voters during the presidential campaign to overhaul a system by extending insurance coverage to virtually all Ameri-cans, lowering medical costs and ending insurance industry practices of refusing protection to people with so-called pre-existing conditions or dropping coverage to those who become seriously ill.

Excepting Senator Olympia Snowe, opposition Republicans are battling the overhaul plans, clai-ming the Democrats' measure will unduly increase the national debt and wrongly intrude on the private sector. And some members of the opposition party see it as a chance to score political points by sinking a measure at the core of Obama's presidency.

Snowe said she was laying aside misgivings for now and voting to advance the bill, a sweeping $829 billion, 10-year health care remake.

"When history calls, history calls," said Snowe.

Most controversial among those issues would be establishment of a government programme in competition with the private insurance industry. That was written out of the Senate Finance Committee but remains part of three reform plans passed by committees in the House of Representatives.