This always amazed me. You can pay for insurance for years, but once you actually need it, then the company can drop you. Well one insurance company got in some hot water for that practice:

One of California’s largest for-profit insurers stopped a controversial practice of canceling sick policyholders Friday after a judge ordered Health Net Inc. to pay more than $9 million to a breast cancer patient it dropped in the middle of chemotherapy.

The ruling by a private arbitration judge was the first of its kind and the most powerful rebuke to the state’s major insurers whose cancellation practices are under fire from the courts, state regulators and elected officials.

But as Duncan says, they will find other ways around it.