The dystopia of the automation of the healthcare system, the day Beveridge turned over in his grave

A few months ago, I asked the question of utopia and dystopia by re-reading Thomas More's De optimo rei.

Today, I would like to come back to the issue basing my observation on the latest developments concerning the automation and digitization of welfare in Europe, and the ethical issues that this raises, in the field of care, in a broad sense : care, universal credit… It may be time to really question our societies, their ability to create and recreate social bonds, trust, affect, empathy,..., their ability to maintain their humanity, both in the treatment of individuals by the central states, and in the daily interindividual relations on which each of us can act.

The automation of the British healthcare system shows in retrospect that while many pre-existing problems remain, new challenges, specific to the system itself, are emerging, at a time when, in the Netherlands, some politicians are questioning the possibility of extending the right to therapeutic euthanasia to elderly people in good physical health, but who are suffering "existential problems" (mental tiredness, depression...), and are convinced that they have lived enough…