Stupid Letter of the Week

Today I start a new series that will be repeated weekly until if tire of it. I call it the Stupid Letter of the Week where I take an especially stupid letter from the Opinion page of the Kansas City Star, paste it into a post and add my own ridicule. This weeks letter comes from a mental midget named Klaus Karbaumer. Here is Klaus' knowledge nugget of the day:

Profit system part of health care problem

People pool their money as protection against life’s hazards. Claims and administrative costs will be paid out of this pool. That in a nutshell is insurance.

If you also want to pay profits out of this pool, premiums will have to be higher to start with, and whenever possible claims will have to be rejected. I do not know why this is so hard to understand for so many people.

So take your pick: Go for the profit-driven system and end up with what we have in the U.S. or look around how nonprofit systems work in health care. Unfortunately, too many people have been brainwashed in perceiving that profit-driven systems are always superior.

The increasing wealth concentration on top and the vanishing middle class as well as the growing ranks of the poor are the immediate and obvious consequences of believing in unfettered capitalism.

Klaus Karbaumer
Platte City

Klaus sounds like a German name to me. Isn't Germany a socialist country? I think Klaus might be happier if he would move back to the motherland. My first issue with Klaus is his apparent hatred of profit. I wonder what he does for a living. Would he agree to work for free, becoming sort of a non-profit trash collector?

I guess I am brainwashed because I do preceive that profit-driven systems (such as capitalism) are superior. Capitalism is the only way innovation and entrepreneurism can reward the risk a business takes. Profit is why competing businesses attempt to provide better service for less money that their competitors so that they gain more customers. It is the mechanism that provides the consumer with the best price versus value.

There are many countries that would satisfy Klaus' need for non-profit services - and they have all failed or are failing. Klaus sounds like an Obama Kool Aid drinking loser.