UK Says, "Oops -- Our Bad"

According to this August 28, 2008 article in The Daily Mail, the UK government has apologized for its earlier policy which denied patients with the eye disease "wet age-related macular degeneration" from receiving a drug that could save their sight ("Too late: After thousands of patients needlessly go blind, NICE boss says sorry for delays in sight-saving drugs").

Initially, their policy was:

...[T]hat patients had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they would be given treatment to save the sight in the other.

According to the article, during the past two years, "many hundreds of patients have gone blind -- some of them needlessly" as the result of a government policy described as "cruel and unnecessary".

But least the head of the government medical rationing agency did express his "genuine sorrow".

I feel much better now about single-payer care. Don't you?

(Via Kelly McNulty.)