Nope, healthcare in this nation is perfect. Don’t need no help at all. FAIL.

The past few years of Dawn Smith’s life have been a medical nightmare turned around only when her story became a rallying cry for health care reform.

Four years ago, the Georgia native was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor. Her problems were as much bureaucratic as medical — Smith’s insurer, CIGNA, declined to cover the costs associated with going to an out-of-network epilepsy center. Without more innovative testing and treatment, she was left with crippling head pains.

Her saving grace was her political symbolism. After months of reaching out fruitlessly to her representatives in Washington, the progressive action group MoveOn.org sent word of her story to its massive email list. Pressured to act, CIGNA agreed days later to cover tests for Smith at the fabled Cleveland Clinic.

It was a much-needed break. But it didn’t fully get rid of the red tape. Last week, Smith received a call from a CIGNA representative telling her that the co-pay on her anti-epileptic medicine was being jacked up by more than $3,000 a year.

“I was knocked to the floor,” she told the Huffington Post. “When they told me I’d have to get another medicine — in this matter-of-fact-type tone — I just started crying.”

With no personal income to cover her costs, Smith once again was saved through the intervention of a third party.

Hours after reporters began questioning CIGNA’s latest move, the insurance company brought the drug price back to its original level.

The mistake, it said, was made by Smith’s doctor who misfiled the prescription.

Read more at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/dawn-smith-brain-tumor-vi_n_309797.html