Almost Canadian

I had a look at the AMA site last night and decided to shell out and get some coverage for our car.

It seemed to me that you can pay for coverage and then you're covered for breakdowns etc. So far so good.

But it also appears that you can go without coverage, wait until you have a breakdown, ring them up at that stage and get covered for your current (and future) problem. Is this correct ? If so, why would anyone bother getting covered until they have a problem as it seems to me that you do not pay a premium for getting covered "after the event" so to speak ?

I'm sure I must be missing something but I'm sure you'll all be telling me I shouldn't have bothered with getting covered until I had a problem