dont get me wrong - I belive government should be kept to a minimum.

Now to start with, this quote you give is not proven to have been from Thomas Jefferson but several people have attributed this to Jefferson - just to be fair.

If you want to deport socialists you should start with the Bush-es. They have spent more on subsidies than any other president of the US.

Now concerning the name of the debate "most mature people who are able to take care of themselves....etc" - notice the part where it says "who are able to take care of themselves" - It seems to me that alot of Republicans want to spin up this idea that if people are not able to take care of themselves, then that is because they are lazy or somehow got themselves into that situation. Now you only need to be sane to understand that this isnt true. It is true to some extent, there are always some percentage who are leaches (like alot of your private company´s, who get most of government subsidies - and not the sick, like Fox would have you belieave). But we all know when we think about it that most of the sick, for example, got to be that way by accident. They cought a virus, or got into a car accident or caught cancer and etc. In other words the world, or your country for that matter is not a level playing field where people get by on their own merits. If you think that then you are confusing the real world with the slogans they teach you at school. If you´re country was fair then a C student who cant speak fluently would never have been president (given that probably over 50% of the country is more qualified than him for the job)

I think you are right about there always being a group of people within each country doing their best to subvert the system - But I am pretty sure that the people you suspect of this are not the real culprits. The real culprits are multi millioner buisness men who like I have said before, get most of the subsidies from the government and then pay their PR people and Front groups to fight against people who would rather spend that money on health care.

From a pure buisness perspective, given the nature of health care - that is, that health care is like a negative lottery where no one knows for sure who is going to have to be needing it: then it is much more proficent to have a general insurance system where everyone chips in (with taxes or direct payment) than if all sorts of different insurance company´s deal with this in their own corner. It is the same as with pension funds. Since we dont know who is going to be needing pension, but we know that a given percentage will need it, it is most cost efficent that everybody chip in into the same piggie bank.