Do people 'deserve' universal health care?

[DuncanONeil]

The lowest medical costs occur in countries with single-payer government run systems. These countries also score among the highest in the world for quality of care.

Define quality? When time is a component of quality you can not rate these Government runs systems as high quality. Were these plans so effective there would be no reports from these countries of the poor care and other quality issues.
Also you are confusing costs with payment. For example a procedure that costs $3,000 does not have its costs reduced because Medicare pays only $1,000!

The US system is the most expensive in the world. The problem is the private insurance companies. Medicare and Medicaid are run with a 2-3% administrative cost (including salaries) whereas the typical insurance company has administrative costs around 40%.

To some extent you are correct. But that is not the only component. There are requirements in place, from the Government, that raise their costs. Artificial restriction on the area provider can seek clients, for one. Another issue is the customer not paying anything, that leads to "who cares the cost I don't have to pay". That is a big fault in all pervasive insurance. In the past I at least got a copy of the bill that went to insurance, now I see nothing. Comparison of administrative cost between Medicare programs and commercial programs is also an unfair comparison as that do not follow the same rules. Medicare does not REQUIRE a profit. Medicare gets to decide, on its own, how much it will pay. The medical provider is prohibited from asking the patient for the difference.
"Administrative costs account for 25 percent of health care spending, but little is known about the portion attributable to billing and insurance-related (BIR) functions. We estimated BIR for hospital and physician care in California. Data for physician practices came from a mail survey and interviews; for hospitals, from regulatory reporting; and for private insurers, from a consulting company. Private insurers spend 9.9 percent of revenue on administration and 8 percent on BIR. Physician offices spend 27 percent and 14 percent, and hospitals, 21 percent and 7–11 percent, respectively. Overall, BIR represents 20–22 percent of privately insured spending in California acute care settings. Single-payer analysts Steffie Woolhandler, David Himmelstein, and their colleagues have argued that moving to a Canadian-style system would reduce U.S. administrative costs by 10–15 percent of total health spending." That means instead of 20% it would be 18%, big savings!

This is before you even look at the amount of profit the companies take out of the system (typically massive as well).

Define massive? The insurance provider with the greatest amount of profit is only at 8%

The problem is even the small to medium insurance companies end up with a board of directors and a not insignificant executive board either. Those salaries have a huge impact on insurance cost.

How do you propose that these companies run? As a point of interest Boards of Directors often are some of the least paid persons in the company.

All said and done about half of what you pay for insurance actually covers the cost of the insurance plan, and most deals with profit and the bloated administration that medicare and medicaid prove is not needed.

Again a comparison of private company with a organization that does not have the same rules and restrictions. They are not comparable! How much of the costs of running the insurance company is driven by the Government rules that they are forced to follow.

In addition the current system has insurance costs rising faster than health costs as companies attempt to pad the bottom line.

You really think the only reason the prices are going up is to increase the profit earned? That is ridiculous! Though you would likely not believe it you would likely be surprised to lean which companies have the highest profit rates.