This is one of those "it depends" things. Anywhere I've flown in Michigan, I'd agree with you. If the MIA is xxxx feet they typically ask you if you can maintain your own terrain and obstruction clearance through xxxx. In Vermont, if you try to pick up in the air ZBW will tell you they can't give you the clearance until you reach xxxx. If that happens to be in the clouds, tough teletubbies. Or they word it as "reaching xxxx feet cleared to Nashua airport via..." or whatever. Even so you can usually GET the clearance before entering the clouds with a little finagling, but it's a hassle. Today when I drove to the airport to leave for Michigan there was a low cloud deck that was in the process of scattering out. By the time I was ready to depart I could have gotten above it okay VFR, but it was really no harder to just call them up on the ground. For reasons I don't understand, that actually works - they give you the void time clearance with no restrictions on the altitude at which it takes effect, and usually no heading restriction either, maybe because there's so little traffic it's not needed.