In comments on my posting of Nicholas Kristof’s column this morning I wished his health care story could have come earlier, with hundreds of others.  Here is another — and thank you MoveOn.org  which months ago put together motivating ads, with the help of many of us.

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.

“I think that it is fair to say that we were unaware of the issue until we started to hear about it through Twitter and blogs,” said Christopher Curran, a CIGNA spokesperson.
“We have been in contact with both Ms. Smith and her physician and have corrected the inaccuracy. Customer service and satisfaction is important to us, we remain committed to working with our customers and physicians to ensure they receive the highest level of service.”

Depending on one’s particular disposition, Dawn Smith is either the saddest tale of someone who finally caught a bit of good luck or the fortunate tale of someone whose life has been defined by suffering and sadness. The last few years of her life, she told the Huffington Post, have been an unmitigated horror: her brain tumor, while benign, was discovered in the worst possible

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