My mistake, I didn't realize at first that this was specifically about control at a federal level. Although, the federal government is not entirely disassociated in Canada either.

That said, the pitfalls of American public education cannot be simply pinned on federal involvement. There seems to be a pattern in the USA that the public option suffers when a private one is also available.

It's primarily a cultural issue, which i will grant has its own advantages, namely in that we get to higher heights (our top universities being better, having access to higher classes of medical care in many instances), but with the disadvantage of inequality, and another disadvantage of public programs often being taken advantage of as they're offered.

There has to be a way to even the two out, without losing either advantage

The difference betwen private and public options in education is markedly different than that of health care. Public education is a near monopoly with 90% of students being enrolled in the public option (vs. 25% in medicare/medicaid, give or take). Many states have even higher numbers of public school students, with no correlation between improvements in states that banned homeschooling or alternative educational paths.

Additionally, having been homeschooled my entire life, I can tell you that its an outright falsehood to say the public option suffers because of altenative education's existence. My family's tax dollars still went to public education (and still does). No state has ever been robbed of educational dollars due to private options existing. The fault of our school systems lies in the parents, teachers, and system that exists, not because a private boogeyman exists that is stealing students or dollars. In reality, many private options exist because the public option has been a failure. Where I live, charter schools are increasing because few students are passing their classes in the public schools, and scandal after scandal ensures that there is very little desire to keep their kids in failing schools.

Canada actually has a lot of exceptional private secondary schools, what he don't have are the same kind private universities. Our private universities are only a handful and almost entirely religious.

On the medical front, we do have advanced private clinics and what not, but they are there as a convienience to those that can afford them.

I see, we can just make up facts to fit to our arguments? The Democrats did not have a super majority in either house when the tax cuts were extended. If they did, the tax cuts would not have been extended for households making more than $250,000 a year.

The wealth gap has been escalating since the introduction of supply side economics in the early 80's. There is absolutely no credible connection between the New Deal and the current huge increase in the wealth gap.

Finally, the health care system in the USA is the best in the world only in the minds of Americans. It is true that for extremely complicated surgery the top talent is in America, but this does very little to benefit most people. The truth is that healthcare in the USA is of very poor quality at a very high price in the general case. I've lived in both America and overseas and have seen the differences first hand many many times. But, my observations are just isolated examples. If you care to investigate your belief that survival rates are higher in the US than other Western countries the numbers are freely available. You'll see that except for a marginally better survival rate for breast cancer, the US scores low in almost all categories. At a much higher price per patient none the less.

Actually, education is entirely within provincial jurisdiction; and the only involvement in education from the federal government is indirect financing through tansfer payment ... and even with how much better the Canadian education system is, we're still "failing" far too many students being that (depending on the study) around 15% to 20% of high-school graduates are functionally illiterate and (while not well studied) a similar or larger portion of highschool graduates are functionally innumerate.

Now, the federal government having some involvement in the educational system does not doom the system, but it is foolish to think that you can create a uniform system that can address the challenges of a small rural school and an inner city school.

Did not a president initiate the 2 wars without congressional approval?  Are we not in Libya wholly against the requests of Congress?  Is the President not the Commander In Chief of the military?

Bush tax cutes - has he even tried to remove them?  Has he worked to educate the congress properly on why we need to remove them?

All Obama does is do what Obama wants and then spout rhetoric peppered with logical fallacies to give us a warm fuzzy feeling and all contrary to his campaign stances.

As for the private health insurance industry...haha, private.  It's not been truly private since the early 70's.Ever notice that the segments of the health industry that the government has no involvmeent in are actually getting cheaper every year and providing better services every year?   The correlation is not coincidental.  It's free market economic law.

Err ?

Right now the social programs are not designed to make a profit, and as most know they are actually making a loss.

Now lets say you privatize them.

That means there will be companies in between that will be looking to make a profit.

Now go ahead and explain me what is going to be the benefit for citizens to have companies making a profit out of their retirement money ????

Right now : 100$ go in, 110$ go out.

your proposal :

100$ go in, some company makes a 20% or so profit.

80$ go out...

Now go ahead and tell people that live only on social security that you propose to cut their revenue by 30%............

As for global healthcare, last I remember the US were only ranked 20 or so worldwide on the quality of their healthcare system...

There are actually states where the life expectancy is going down while in most european countries it is still increasing by 3 months/year or so...

There is NOTHING that is going to happen with "educating" anyone on the GOP side.  You talk about needing to let the Bushg tax cuts lapse and it gets spun as "Obama is raising taxes".  It goes nowhere ever:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/04/obama-i-refuse-to-renew-bush-tax-cuts-for-rich/1

Republicans said they will battle to maintain tax rates for all Americans.

"The one area that we know we're not going to get very far on is the idea that we're going to raise taxes on the very people that we expect to invest in our economy and to help create jobs," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

You do know that nonprofit health insurance isn't any cheaper then regular health insurance, right.

If your talkign about privatising EVERYTHING....

I'd look at what countries spend what on bio-technology and who makes the big breakthroughs.

Equality of care really doesn't mean a thing when the care is below the standard level that could of been had under the old system.

The USA is just about the last bastion of proper medical research funding and breakthroughs.