As a new president and Congress prepare to take office, representatives of the nation's health insurance industry seem ready to play "Let's Make a Deal."  

It sounds simple --  but the devil will be in the details.

Representatives of the nation's health insurance industry have floated a proposal to drop their despised pre-existing conditions, which exclude so many Americans from health coverage, in exchange for Congress requiring all Americans to have coverage, according to the New York Times.

The insurers believe that if coverage isn't mandatory for all, people will wait until they become ill before spending money on purchasing insurance.

Alissa Fox, a vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association said: "Insurance works best when everyone is in the pool. You need healthy people in the insurance pool to help pay for sicker individuals who are much more motivated to buy coverage."

As we all know, health care is one of the major issues on President-elect Obama's agenda, however, to date he has not favored mandatory coverage for all Americans.  In fact, that was a major bone of contention between Obama and Senator Clinton during the campaign.

Pre-existing conditions in the fine print of health insurance policies have presented a cruel roadblock for those who need health coverage the most -- those with chronic and expensive health conditions.

This proposal from the health insurance industry offers some hope but should be looked at as a very tentative first step in the complicated legislative process needed to reshape our national health care policy.

Americans need to watch carefully as Congress begins to craft health care legislation that may affect our access to healthcare and our national and personal pocketbooks.