Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus , who has a history of going his own way on major policy matters, Friday announced plans to unveil his own “specific goals and policy options for comprehensive health care reform in 2009” next week — without waiting for the detailed proposals of President-elect Barack Obama .

Baucus, D-Mont., a centrist who works closely with Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Finance’s ranking Republican, will have jurisdiction over a huge chunk of any health- care overhaul Congress tackles next year. Finance controls policy for Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, taxes and Social Security, among other issues.

Baucus has an independent streak that often irks Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate. He supported President Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, unlike most of his fellow Democrats, and helped write the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law, which most of his party opposed as inadequate and too generous to private health insurers.

In a letter to Obama on Thursday, Baucus said: “Next week I will present to you and to the country my plan to move forward on health care reform in the early days of the 111th Congress and of your administration.”

He added, “I made sure the Finance Committee spent this year learning and preparing for action on a comprehensive overhaul of the health care system, and I intend for us to move swiftly and decisively with legislation in early 2009. The Finance Committee and this incoming administration have laid lots of groundwork already, and there’s just no time to waste in tackling health care reform.”

He said he would “work together with the new administration” in refining the plan.

By contrast, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy , D-Mass., chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and his staff have been emphasizing that they plan to use Obama’s health plan as a blueprint. They are already working closely with the president-elect’s team.

The HELP Committee will share jurisdiction with Finance over portions of a comprehensive health care overhaul.

“I think everybody on the Democratic side will be taking their cues from the Obama White House,” Kennedy staff director Michael Myers said Thursday.