The end game at hand, Senate Democrats appeared ready to jettison a proposed Medicare expansion from historic health care legislation Monday in hopes of assuring Christmas-week passage of the bill to extend coverage to tens of millions.

"Democrats aren't going to let the American people down," Majority Leader Harry Reid said after a closed-door meeting called to discuss last-minute trade-offs in the legislation that President Barack Obama has made a top priority. "I'm confident that by next week, we will be on our way toward final passage."

Liberals sought the Medicare expansion as a last-minute substitute for a full-blown, government-run insurance program that moderates earlier insisted be jettisoned. But it drew strong opposition from Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and quieter concerns from a dozen Democrats _ all of whose votes are essential for Democrats to overcome implacable Republican opposition.

"Put me down tonight as encouraged about the direction these talks are going," Lieberman said less than 24 hours after he rattled Democrats with his threat to join side with Republican opponents unless he got his way.

Reid did not say flatly that Democrats had decided to drop the proposal for uninsured Americans as young as 55 to purchase coverage under Medicare. But several senators said it appeared inevitable, and liberals sounded resigned to it. "I want to see health care reform," Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said.

One official said participants at the meeting broke into applause when Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who switched parties earlier in the year, said he had made his move to become the 60th vote for health care.

And with all Democratic senators invited to meet with Obama at the White House complex on Tuesday, that appeared a prime opportunity for him to join his guests in a display of unity.

The overall measure, costing nearly $1 trillion over a decade, is designed to expand coverage and ban the insurance industry practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. Obama also has urged Congress to slow the rate of growth in health care spending nationally, and several days after Reid submitted a package of revisions, lawmakers awaited final word from the Congressional Budget Office on that point.

Disputes over abortion and the importation of prescription drugs from Canada and other countries also flared as the Senate entered a third week of debate on the legislation.

The president met Monday with Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who has been trying to negotiate a compromise on the abortion issue with Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Both senators oppose abortions, but Nelson has been outspoken in demanding changes in the bill before he can vote for it.