Blatant hypocrisy — it’s spelled P-A-L-I-N: Sarah Palin sees eye-to-eye with Albertans in Calgary speech.

The vocal opponent of health-care reform in the U.S. steered largely clear of the topic except to reveal a tidbit about her life growing up not far from Whitehorse.

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” she said. “And I think now, isn’t that ironic?”

Good thing the “death panels” didn’t get her; we would have been deprived of Palin’s great wisdom.

LGF reader Killgore Trout points out that the wingnut blogs are trying to spin this by saying Canada didn’t switch to single payer health care until 1966 — but that’s highly misleading (as usual):

In 1957, the federal government passed the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act to fund 50% of the cost of such programs for any provincial government that adopted them. The HIDS Act outlined five conditions: public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility. These remain the pillars of the Canada Health Act.

By 1961, all ten provinces had agreed to start HIDS Act programs. In Saskatchewan, the act meant that half of their current program would now be paid for by the federal government.

UPDATE at 3/8/10 3:41:40 pm:

LGF reader Jadespring adds:

She was born in Idaho in 1964 and move to Alaska when she was an infant. Single payer came in 1966. So in order for the defenders ‘defense’ to work she’d have to be talking about a very, very small window of time.