SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE DECIDER: Charlie Gard’s Parents Drop Legal Battle Over Experimental Treatment.

The parents of critically ill baby Charlie Gard dropped their legal bid Monday to send him to the United States for an experimental treatment after new medical tests showed that the window of opportunity to help him had closed.

Chris Gard and Connie Yates wept as they withdrew their appeal during a London High Court hearing, signaling the end of a legal saga that had stretched for months. The couple’s attorney, Grant Armstrong, said recent medical tests on 11-month-old Charlie showed the baby has irreversible muscular damage, and the new treatment wouldn’t help.

“It’s too late for Charlie,” Armstrong said. “The damage has been done.”

Medically, there may have been no hope for Charlie even at an earlier date. Politically, the process the Gards were subjected to was a crude power play of the state against the individual, and the state won.

Britons should have no doubt about their place in a single payer system.