As earlier posts have said, there is a law that protects people when they switch insurance companies and you should be able to switch insurance with no problem. It is a federal law so it applies to everyone in the U.S. It is called something like Health Insurance Portability Act. I know it is referred to as "Hippa" for short. In general this is how it works - Insurance companies usually have a clause that limits their coverage for "pre-existing conditions" which are defined as medical conditions which have been treated, diagnosed etc. The insurance may limit the coverage on that pre-existing condition until the person has been covered by their policy for, say, 6 months. Hippa mandates that the insurance company include the prior insurance when calculating its time of coverage. So, if a person has been covered by a different insurance they are, in effect, "given credit" for the previous coverage and their coverage under the new policy, even for the pre-existing condition, begins immediately. If you want to double check, just to make sure there aren't any exceptions for the military, I would call a Federal agency for confirmation,. Maybe you can even get it in writing. I looked up a few numbers in our phone book, but you could see about listings in your area. Here are two to try - Federal Information Center main number 1-800-688-9889 and Health Care Information 1-888-586-6340. Or you could visit their web site at http://www.fed.gov and look through the directory for "health" sites. Hope that helps.