The trouble with your stance is that the game has to be designed in one way or another. Either the game is designed to be commonly lethal and therefore requires the raise dead spell to be easily available, or it isn't.
Really? Most, but not all, aspects of a game break down "gracefully" under small rules changes. If this weren't the case designing the game in the first place would be nigh impossible. It's not that difficult to demonstrate in this particular instance, either. What if 4e had included a paragraph like this in the Death and Dying section:
"Some DMs may prefer more or less deadly combat than presented above. For more deadly combat, you die after failing only 1 death saving throw, or when you take damage reducing your current hit points to half your healing surge value expressed as a negative number. For less deadly combat, you die after failing 5 death saving throws, or if you take damage reducing your current hit points to your normal maximum hit points expressed as a negative number."
There isn't even a need to rewrite Raise Dead in 4e: "Some magical effects trap the soul and thus prevent Raise Dead from working, and the gods can intervene to prevent a soul from journeying back to the realm of the living." This is written carte blanche, in the ritual itself, for a DM to say Raise Dead doesn't work because the gods don't let it. But they could have just as easily written in the DMG "Some DMs may prefer that Raise Dead and similar magic not be present in their campaign. If so, make sure to inform your players before starting a campaign."
Nothing else about the game needed to change, and suddenly 4e is more or less deadly than "default". You would be correct if changing these two bits caused unintended cascading changes in the rules, or required them so the game would function, but they simply don't.
Even in 3.5, where the presence of save-or-die makes things much swingier, simple rules can mitigate the effect without destroying the entire edifice of the game.
I would prefer it to not be a default assumption that raise dead is a common tool for adventurers, and that death is avoidable enough that it isn't necessary for it to be a common tool.
I prefer that the game be playable for as many styles and preferences as possible. When those preferences differ enough, options are highly desirable. But If I have to choose a default for the game (and I do believe robust defaults are important) it is the one where entire campaigns don't unexpectedly crash and burn because a single ritual or spell doesn't exist.
If I have to choose a default for my games, it is one where raise dead is rare. Whether it is my own houserule or an "official" option, every single player will know it going in, and that will be one small part of many that informs how they can understand and interact with the world they'll be playing in.
For example, in my last 3.5 game each character started with a randomly rolled number of "soul points". I think it was 1d4-1. The players knew the odds, but not the result. A PC needed to spend 1 soul point to be raised, so on average the PCs had either 2.5 or 1.5 raises available. But they might have 0. This mix of hope and apprehension was sufficient for their caution, but did mean most could get past at least one screw-up. At one point the characters in that campaign entered a city that sucked interesting and unique knowledge from creatures entering or exiting it, sometimes killing those who did not possess sufficient knowledge. One character elected to stay behind when the rest of the party left, having been killed on the way in. He eventually enlisted aid from NPCs in this city (many of whom were similarly reluctant to leave) to construct a golem version of himself, which joined the party for the climax of the campaign. This is a case where the existence of raise dead plus a limit on its use lead to memorable events that would not have been possible if I had merely allowed it freely or made it impossible.
