Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Congress will pass a health-care overhaul that will differ from legislation proposed by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and some Republicans will back it, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown predicted.

“It is going to be the plan much more similar to the three House bills” or a version approved by the Senate health committee, which include a government-run insurance program, Brown, a member of the health panel, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend.

Some Democrats like Brown are unhappy with the $856 billion plan Baucus’s panel will debate next week because it lacks a government program to compete with private insurers, which they argue is the best way to lower costs. The Baucus plan must eventually be melded with the one Brown’s health panel approved in July.

“We are going to end up with a good bill with, I think, a strong public option,” said Brown. “Some more forward-looking Republicans in the end are going to come around and vote for this.”

Brown said Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, the Republican most likely to join Democrats on the legislation, “is surely up for grabs” and she will have “an impact on it and input into it.”

Brown also said “there is a chance” that fellow Ohio Senator George Voinovich, a Republican who is retiring, will vote for the measure.

‘Independent Voice’

“He’s had a long, proud history of public service in Ohio, and this would be a good cap to that,” Brown said. “He’s been an independent voice for a lot of years.”

Senate Republicans and even some Democrats including Baucus say the public option can’t win passage in their chamber because of concern it will unfairly undercut the market for private insurers. While President Barack Obama says he prefers the option, he has left the door open to a scaled-back compromise.

Brown, who also sits on the banking committee, said it may be early next year before that panel approves legislation to revamp financial regulations. Obama is pressing lawmakers to complete a measure this year.

It depends on “how much time health care consumes and how much of our energies it saps,” he said. “I have no doubt we are going to get a good financial-services bill with a strong consumer protection in it by early next year at the latest.”

Executive Pay

Brown also said he agrees with the leaders of France and other European countries who want to cap compensation for global bank executives.

“The French are right on that one,” he said, adding that he doesn’t know if such a limit will be included in the U.S. legislation.

The world’s largest and fastest-growing economies will discuss financial regulation when they meet in Pittsburgh Sept. 24-25 for the Group of 20 summit. Obama has rejected setting compensation limits on bank executives.

Congress and the Obama administration want to prevent a repeat of the turmoil in the financial-services industry a year ago, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and American International Group Inc. froze credit markets and worsened the global recession.

On health care, Brown said Baucus miscalculated in thinking he had a chance of winning the backing of finance committee Republicans Charles Grassley of Iowa and Mike Enzi of Wyoming.

Grassley, Enzi

“I would not have done it the way Senator Baucus did,” Brown said. “Senator Grassley and Senator Enzi had no real intention to support” a bill that Democrats would pass.

In the health committee, Republicans offered amendments that “made the bill better” and gave it a “bipartisan flavor,” Brown said.

Still, he added, “Republicans are on a pretty short leash from insurance companies” when it comes to tougher regulations and a public option.

The finance committee plan, released by Baucus Sept. 16, would require almost all Americans to get health insurance or pay a fine, expand Medicaid and offer subsidies to help millions of low-income people obtain coverage. It would also tax insurance companies on costly “Cadillac” health plans to raise $215 billion over 10 years to help pay for the program, which is also raising objections from some Democrats.

Instead of a government-run plan, Baucus proposed allocating $6 billion in seed money to create nonprofit, consumer-owned cooperatives to compete with companies such as Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna Inc.

Baucus’s months of negotiations failed to reach a bipartisan compromise as Republicans on his panel argued his plan is too costly. Nonetheless, Baucus also predicts the measure will pass his committee with some Republican support.

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington at cdodge1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 19, 2009 00:01 EDT