New Delhi, Aug. 22 -- As I write this, a friend is trying to settle a health insurance claim for his daughter. The insurer denied cashless treatment on the grounds that the condition for which she was hospitalized might have been pre-existing.

This is precisely the kind of confusion the insurance regulator sought to prevent when it defined a pre-existing condition as one involving prior symptoms requiring a doctor's diagnosis or prescribed medication. The child had neither, yet the claim was denied. Fortunately, she was admitted under the care of her paediatrician, who was able to review her medical history and establish that the condition was not pre-existing.

Health insurance claims are becoming increasingly complicated, and not all c...