The individual and society

I love my job and quite like my "adult" life-style... But it feels like my opinions about "big ideas" are becoming more simplistic as time passes; at least compared to how it felt like when I was at university. It seems that people in the "real world" don't engage in critical analyses of each other's ideas as much as "scholars" do (or at least, as much as they engage in criticizing each other's personalities). Of course, my recollection of my student years is probably skewed towards the positive. I'm sure we used to bitch at each other back then too...

In any case, here's one of those simple opinions I've been entertaining lately:

A society should be organized (and regulated) so that people are personally responsible for the choices they make and have to assume the consequences of their actions. At the same time, however, individual "accidents" should be dampened by the social safety net so that events outside one's control is not financially debilitating.

In the context of health care, for example, accidents and diseases should be covered by the state, but health conditions deriving from one's poor life choices (like smoking) should be covered by the individual. Between these two extremes could even be a gray area where a certain percentage of the cost is covered by the state depending on the statistics relating to the cause. For example rock climbing, which may seem dangerous, could be shown empirically to be much safer than smoking, which may appear harmless, and thus treated accordingly. Diseases associated with old age should be accepted as part of the natural cycle of life, and the state shouldn't subsidize individuals wanting to push the inevitable by only a few years, but instead make the final transition as comfortable as possible...

How would this position play out in other areas like education, business, ecology, the economy, etc? Why does this seem to simplistic? What am I not thinking about?