I agree with posters saying that this will be the way the UK goes if we allow all the Coalition changes relating to the NHS and welfare state.
It's very, very scary, particularly the NHS changes, which are basically privatisation through the back door. If we let these reforms go through, the next thing will be 'incentives' to get people to go private and pay for private insurance, followed by those on benefits being eligible for a free (but substandard) form of insurance so that 'no one will suffer', but it will eventually leaving lots of low earners and those on lower-middle incomes (i.e. most of the country) completely without.
The cap on HB means in some areas you will have to house a family of 5 (2 adults, one boy, one girl) for less than £280 pcm. Even in the poorest regions that's a tall order and pretty impossible in the private sector. That's assuming that you qualify for anything at all. We'll end up with people forced to live in substandard, overcrowded conditions, resulting in an increase in health problems and social deprivation.
The changing of the criteria for who is disabled will mean plenty of people are newly termed unemployed with an associated drop in income but with no hope of getting a job. They will suffer financially and socially as a result, and it is likely that their health will deteriorate further.
Give us 10 years and that programme could be about Britain. And the justification for it is that the poor deserve their plight because they are all lazy and feckless (after all, there are plenty of jobs available according to some).
Right wing (I mean right of centre, not fascism) politics has always relied on the assumption that those with the wealth will behave in a philanthropic way and divert money back into the economy and good causes so that those at the bottom benefit. Some, of course, do. But if history should show us anything it's that in general the super-rich hang on to their wealth at all cost and do a very good job of getting the moderately rich, the comfortable, and the poor to fight among themselves for the rest.