College students can get health insurance through their parents if they are full-time students. But if they get sick or injured, and take toomuch time off of school, they could be dropped from their health plan.  Maine has a law that offers college students protection from losing coverage, but it doesn't apply to all plans.  A new federal law taking effect today does.

Federal law now says that health insurers must cover students on medical leave for up to one year. It's called Michelle's Law, named after the late Michelle Morse of New Hampshire, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2003.

AnnMarie Morse is Michelle's mother. "While she was recovering, her doctors suggested her treatment and with that suggested she take a leave of absence from college."

But the Plymouth State University student kept a full load of classes so she could stay on her parents' health insurance policy. "Even when she was sick as could be she still trudged along and went to school, and she had to wear a pump on her hip because her chemo lasted 48 hours and it was administered every other week. But she always had a smile on her face -- very positive."

As she tended to her sick daughter, AnnMarie Morse lobbied New Hampshire to pass the law, which it did. And so did several other states, including Maine. The problem is that state laws do not apply to policies offered by employers large enough to be self-insured, meaning they pay out their own claims.

So Morse turned to Congress to get the law implemented nationally. She found many allies in the patient advocacy community who helped her get the law passed.

"It's hard enough to fight cancer without having to go through a lot of mumbo jumbo with the insurance companies to actually get the care you need, to get yourself better," says Dan Smith, President of the American Cancer Action Network, the lobbying arm of the American Cancer Society.

He says Michelle's Law closes a giant loophole that allows insurance companies to drop students if they don't meet the criteria for full-time student, which varies from plan to plan.

Some insurers require a certain amount of credit hours; others want verification from the college that a student is full time. "It was applying to college students across the country and it wasn't just about cancer. It was about any serious disease," Smith says.

The law is expected to benefit thousands of college students nationwide. Maine's Superintendent of Insurance Mila Kofman praised the federal law because it now covers students who didn't benefit from Maine's law.

She notes however, that Maine's law is more expansive than the federal one. It does not limit the amount of time that a student can go on medical leave to a year. "So for instance if your parents' policy allows you to stay up to age 25 as long as you're a full-time student, if you're forced to drop out of school because of an illness at age 21, for instance, you can stay on that policy for four years if you can't get back into school."

Kofman notes that even though Michelle's Law technically takes effect today, self-insured employers do not have to comply with the law until the next plan year. Since most businesses operate on a calendar year, that date will likely be in January.