Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she expects the Senate to pass an overhaul of U.S. health care next month and President Barack Obama prefers taxing high-end medical plans to help pay for the revamp.

“The hope is there will be 60 votes mid-December to pass bills in Senate” before House and Senate leaders get to work on merging their legislation in a conference committee, Sebelius said today at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council conference in Washington. She didn’t say when she thought final legislation would reach President Obama.

A remake of U.S. health care, Obama’s top domestic priority, is intended to cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans while curbing medical costs. Senate proposals for purchasing exchanges, subsidies and a requirement that all Americans have coverage would cost more than $800 billion over 10 years and mark the biggest changes to U.S. health care in more than four decades.

Obama would prefer that Congress raise revenue for a health-care overhaul through a tax on high-end health-care plans, as the Senate Finance Committee has included in its bill, Sebelius said. Obama’s “preference both ultimately in terms of cost control, but also in the fact that the payment is directly tied to health-care, is the excise tax,” Sebelius said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 17, 2009 09:29 EST