WASHINGTON -- The glow from a health-care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama yesterday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.

About 14 hours after the late-Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to "take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people."

The problem is that the Senate won't run with it. The government health-insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate.

If a government plan is part of the deal, "As a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need.

"The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said dismissively.

Democrats did not line up to challenge him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators might not finish health care this year.

Nonetheless, the House vote provided an important lesson in how to succeed with less-than-perfect party unity, and one that Senate Democrats might be able to adapt. House Democrats overcame their own divisions and broke an impasse that threatened the bill after liberals grudgingly accepted tougher restrictions on abortion funding, as abortion opponents demanded.

In the Senate, the stumbling block is the idea of the government competing with private insurers. Liberals might have to swallow hard and accept a deal without a public plan in order to keep the legislation alive.

Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who voted for a version of the Senate bill in committee, has given the Democrats a possible way out. She's proposing to allow a government plan as a last resort if, after a few years, premiums keep escalating and local health-insurance markets remain in the grip of a few big companies.

That approach appeals to moderates such as Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. "If the private market fails to reform, there would be a fallback position," she said last week. "It should be triggered by choice and affordability, not by political whim."