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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama summoned allies, skeptics and health care figures of all stripes to the White House Thursday to debate ideas for overhauling the nation’s costly system and declared, “The status quo is the one option that is not on the table.”

The big Washington session — Obama called it a health care summit — and meetings to follow around the country show the new president’s push for expanded health insurance will be more open and inclusive than the Clinton administration’s failed attempt of 15 years ago.

“In this effort, every voice must be heard. Every idea must be considered. Every option must be on the table. There will be no sacred cows in this discussion,” Obama said as he opened his White House forum on what he calls the greatest threat to the foundation of the U.S. economy. He also issued a warning: “Those who seek to block any reform at any cost will not prevail this time around.”

Willingness to compromise
The U.S. system is the world’s costliest and leaves an estimated 48 million people uninsured.

Although he wants coverage for all, the president suggested a willingness to compromise even if it means not fully meeting his goal. That, too, was a break from former President Bill Clinton’s posture in the 1990s when he promised to veto any health care measure that didn’t give him what he sought.

This time, Obama said, “Each of us must accept that none of us will get everything we want, and no proposal for reform will be perfect.” And, he said, “While everyone has a right to take part in this discussion, no one has the right to take it over.”

Obama is setting a rigorous timeline to address the “crushing cost of health care this year, in this administration.” His advisers say he’s determined to pass legislation in his first year in office, and they say while he hopes for a bipartisan measure, he won’t be deterred by ideological fights.

On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate rallied behind him, saying Thursday that they hoped to have a health care reform measure passed by the end of the summer.

Still, the political reality of reshaping the complex medical system is certain to intervene as the broad discussion about the need for reform gives way to the details. Those may well conflict with the priorities of a host of stakeholders, including patients, doctors, labor unions, drug companies, businesses and employers, insurers and lawmakers up for re-election next year.

At the same time, there’s also a fundamental fault line between Democrats and Republicans over the role of government in the health care system.

Avoiding Clinton’s mistakes
For now, Obama is seeking to use his popularity as a new president and the public’s high level of frustration with medical costs to get something done on the thorny issue without making the same mistakes as the last Democratic president.

In hindsight, both supporters and opponents agree that Clinton made a series of missteps and miscalculations that doomed his plan from the outset.

With first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton leading the charge, the measure was written by the White House with little input from lawmakers or interest groups. Stakeholders of all sides complained they were shut out of the process. Clinton’s veto threat also limited his room to negotiate.

This time, Obama is making a very public point to consult with people at the start of deliberations.

Hence, more than 120 people from all sectors — and with a wide range of viewpoints — were taking part in the program. They included longtime health reform heavyweights, including the cancer-battling Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, and some people who helped kill Clinton’s overhaul in the 1990s.

Also unlike Clinton, Obama is planning to send only broad principles to Congress of what he wants to see in the bill, such as increased coverage and controlled costs. The House and Senate will be left to do the heavy lifting. And, Obama is planning to hold a series of health care forums outside of Washington to solicit ideas and drum up support for his plan.

SANTA ANA, California – The revelation that the FBI planted a spy in a Southern California mosque was explosive news in a Muslim community that has long suspected the government of even broader surveillance.

Muslim-American organizations have demanded an inquiry. Some say the news has rattled their faith in American democracy.

Despite the reaction, former FBI agents and federal prosecutors say spying on mosques is still one of the government’s best weapons to thwart terrorists and that the benefit to national security is likely to far outweigh any embarrassment to the agency.  “What matters to the FBI is preventing a massive attack that might be planned by some people … using the mosque or church as a shield because they believe they’re safe there,” said Robert Blitzer, the FBI’s former counterterrorism chief.

“That is what the American people want the FBI to do,” he said. “They don’t want some type of attack happening on U.S. soil because the FBI didn’t act on information.”

One of the most-heralded U.S. terrorism convictions, for example, grew out of the work of an informant who spent months inside a New Jersey mosque and derailed a plan to blow up New York City landmarks. Radical Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman was sentenced to life in prison in 1995. He was also the spiritual leader for the men convicted in the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center.

“A lot of what happened was planned in the mosque,” said Andy McCarthy, who was lead prosecutor on the case. “The recruiting went on in the mosque, a lot of the instruction went on in the mosque, we even had gun transactions in there.”

California case comes to light
In the California case, information about the informant who spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine came out last week at a detention hearing for a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard, an Afghan native and naturalized U.S. citizen named Ahmadullah Niazi.

Niazi, 34, was arrested Feb. 20 on charges of lying about his ties to terrorist groups on his citizenship and passport applications. He will be arraigned Monday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.

FBI Special Agent Thomas J. Ropel III testified at the hearing that an FBI informant infiltrated Niazi’s mosque and several others in Orange County and befriended Niazi. Ropel said the informant recorded Niazi on multiple occasions talking about blowing up buildings, acquiring weapons and sending money to the Afghan mujahadeen.

Niazi has not been charged with terrorism and it’s not yet clear if the FBI was focused on anything beyond his activities. Neither the mosque nor any other of its members have been charged.

A 46-year-old fitness instructor told The Associated Press last week he was the informant. Craig Monteilh of Irvine said Niazi talked about blowing up buildings and discussed sending Monteilh to a terrorist training camp in Yemen or Pakistan.

Monteilh said his tenure as an informant ended after Niazi and other members of the Islamic Center of Irvine reported him to authorities. A Muslim advocacy group has demanded a federal investigation into whether Niazi was arrested because he refused to become an FBI informant after telling the agency about Monteilh.

Muslim leaders suspected infiltration
Local Muslim leaders say they had suspected since at least 2006 that the FBI was trying to infiltrate the Islamic Center and other Muslim organizations.

Some community leaders, worried that they were being watched, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI in 2006 seeking surveillance records on themselves. They are still engaged in litigation over the request, said Shakeel Syed, executive of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California.

“We suspected this was happening,” said Syed, who suspects his home and office phones are wired. “What these guys have done is create an environment where every person begins to suspect the other and with the infighting and inward suspicion, the community becomes it’s own victim.”

A spokeswoman for the FBI’s Los Angeles bureau, Lourdes Arocho, had no comment.

Former FBI agents, however, said that although the law places almost no constraints on the use of informants, the agency takes sending an informant into a mosque very seriously and imposes a higher threshold for such requests.

Agents would have to have credible and specific information about criminal activity inside a mosque or being committed by a mosque member before sending a plant in, said Steven Pomerantz, former assistant director and chief of counterterrorism for the FBI.

Such a request would also be approved by the highest-ranking agency officials, former agents said.

“You just wouldn’t go sending informants willy nilly into mosques just to determine what was going on,” Pomerantz said. “You have to have some articulable reason or basis to do that.”

Senator Edward M. Kennedy has been holding biweekly meetings to help build a consensus solution on health care that follows the road map laid out by President Barack Obama

As part of the $3.5 trillion budget he proposed on Thursday, President Barack Obama is pushing for a down payment on universal health care, a reserve fund of $634 billion over 10 years paid for by higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans and savings from government programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

By putting the funding on the table before the program has even been crafted, though, Obama is essentially putting the cart before the horse. Many health-care analysts hope to see more details of the President’s plan during a White House health-care summit expected at the end of next week — but they may be looking toward the wrong end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Unlike the failed 1994 Clinton health-care-reform effort, this isn’t going to be a bill that the Executive Branch drafts in isolation and then tries to ram down the throats of Congress.

Instead, Congress — particularly a working group convened by longtime health-care-reform advocate Senator Edward M. Kennedy — is working on a consensus solution following the road map laid out by Obama.

In fact, since the middle of last fall, Kennedy’s group has held biweekly meetings that feel somewhat like a college class — albeit the most advanced seminar on health policy on the planet. There’s a curriculum for each of the two-hour sessions; topics have ranged from benefits packages and employer mandates to tax treatment of health insurance, payment reform and prevention and wellness.

Although they are about halfway through the agenda, participants say progress has already been made. The group agrees on broad principles like a focus on prevention, a commitment to cutting costs and universal coverage approached through the expansion of employer plans. But the group — so far on the friendliest of terms — has disagreed on whether coverage should be mandated or simply offered to all individuals, how much money is needed and what the proper role of government plans should be in the private system. And they haven’t even gotten to some of the tougher parts yet, like how to make cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

Taking part in these meetings, as was reported last week in the New York Times, are a diverse group of stakeholders: AARP, the insurer Aetna, the AFL-CIO, the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association (AMA), America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Most participants declined to comment directly on the talks, saying they were sworn to secrecy by Kennedy and risked expulsion from the meetings by talking on the record — though a few were willing to speak anonymously about some of the progress that has been made. Most were eager to praise the new momentum Obama has breathed into the talks this week, including the breakout session on health in his fiscal-responsibility summit on Monday, the underlining of his commitment to health-care reform in his address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday and in his budget announcement on Thursday, and his announcement of a health-care summit for next week.

“This is a frank and respectful discussion that essentially began in earnest on Monday,” says Dr. Nancy Nielsen, president of the AMA. “What we’re hearing from him is that there is an urgent need for health-care reform and that we also want to make sure that we get it right when we do those reforms.”

Senator Chris Dodd, who often sits in on the meetings in case Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, can’t participate, has said he expects to see legislation introduced by Memorial Day. Kennedy monitors the progress by telephone from home. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, who has called health-care reform his top priority this year and is working hand-in-hand with Kennedy — Baucus’ staff has often been in the room when stimulus negotiations allowed them the time — has said that he expects to hold hearings in the spring.

By all accounts, the bill will go through the usual committee process in an effort to draw as much bipartisan support as possible. Democrats control the Senate with 58 votes — two votes short of preventing a Republican filibuster, so at least some GOP support must be drawn. There has been concern among the stakeholders that the Republicans have not been in any of the meetings thus far; one person involved in the talks said they have been invited but have declined to attend, though several participants have said they keep GOP colleagues abreast of progress.

“We would hope that any process that goes forward will actually include Republicans and Democrats to get support not only of both parties but of the American people,” says Dan Smith, president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

The House, meanwhile, has been waiting for guidance from the Administration before it gets the legislative ball rolling — guidance that could come as early as next week at the anticipated White House summit.

Obama is still struggling to put his team in place after the loss of Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader who withdrew his name from consideration to become Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Administration’s health-care czar after revelations of his failure to pay $128,000 in taxes.

At least three experts involved in the talks say the House is so far behind, they will have to run to catch up to the Senate. The Senate’s progress is largely due to Kennedy’s “incredible ability and strength,” says Billy Tauzin, CEO and president of PhRMA, and a former Congressman from Louisiana. “He’s anxious to make this a great legacy.”

The sticking points within the group are no surprise to the health-care community. “You don’t need to know what’s going on in the secret meetings to know the two biggest challenges are the individual mandate and costs,” says Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, which is convening the meetings. Obama’s budget also draws some battle lines on these issues: the White House, for instance, doesn’t support an individual mandate as Kennedy and Baucus do.

Then there’s the question of whether the program can really be shoehorned into the $634 billion 10-year budget figure that Obama has proposed; some have estimated that it would take at minimum $1 trillion over 10 years. And while everyone in the room has marveled at how congenial the discussions have been, the hardest part is yet to come. “Whenever there’s change, there will be a winner and loser,” says one meeting participant. “It will be not easy.”