And speaking of irony…
Cidu Bill on Mar 20th 2010
We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, Isn’t that ironic? -Sarah Palin
Okay, as far as I can tell, she is using the word “ironic” correctly — so she gets points for that even as she loses points for bad sentence structure — but given her strong opposition to any federally run health care (”Obama’s socialized medicine and death panels”), what’s her actual point here?
Filed in Bill Bickel, Sarah Palin, irony | 27 responses so far
Winter Wallaby Mar 20th 2010 at 12:34 pm 1
Does there have to be a point? She’s just telling a story that she thinks is interesting.
Still, I’m not sure this is really “ironic.” Really more of an “inference.”
schleifnet Mar 20th 2010 at 12:59 pm 2
unfortunately the background on the story is she used to border jump before canada had gov run healthcare (early 70s i think)
George P Mar 20th 2010 at 01:05 pm 3
Oh, it’s ironic: she thinks Canadian health care is superior, but she’s fighting against it because she likes the money from the industry and she wants to attack Democrats.
Detcord Mar 20th 2010 at 01:26 pm 4
CIDU Bill
Your quote seems to come from the Huffington Post, and appears as 2 sentence fragments. This, larger fragment, is how MSNBC reported the comments you noted.
According to MSNBC she was, “making a weekend speech in Calgary, [where she] acknowledged her family used medical care in Whitehorse, the capital of Canada’s Yukon Territory, decades ago.”
“My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse,” Palin said during her Saturday night speech at Calgary’s BMO Centre, part of the Fraser institute’s influential speakers program.
“Believe it or not — this was in the ’60s — we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing, and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse, and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”
Her father is reported to have later noted that, “they had little choice, given their location in Skagway.” According to MSNBC, her father paid for the services rendered.
Since she’s speaking, it’s difficult for me to see any significant grammatical errors in this context. It is rare that I hear someone speaking as they would write grammatically – and their speeches tend toward the boring side – in my opinion.
Rebecca Mar 20th 2010 at 03:20 pm 5
I THINK she’s saying it’s ironic because Canadian health care sucks so that Canadians are always crossing the border and coming to America to receive health care. I don’t know why she believes that’s true if she’s gotten health care in Canada and thought it was great … gosh, she’s confusing.
Detcord Mar 20th 2010 at 04:35 pm 6
Rebecca (5)
I can find no mention in Palin’s speech regarding the quality of Canadian care. I doubt she could offer an opinion as she was between 0 and 5 years old at the time-period referenced. Her father’s opinion, which given the time, is much more relevant was this…
“We much preferred to use our facilities because my insurance didn’t cover anything in Whitehorse. And even though they have socialized medicine, I still had to pay the bill, being an American citizen,” – according to MSNBC.
Since CIDU Bill said he had no issue with Sarah’s reference to “irony”, I haven’t examined that aspect. In my research I did encounter one site that suggested that few Canadians cross the border for medical care, mainly because they can’t afford American prices. Personally, I doubt that Canadian medical care is all that different from American. Access to that care may be another story.
cicely Mar 20th 2010 at 04:54 pm 7
…what’s her actual point here?
Do as I say, not as I do?
Detcord Mar 20th 2010 at 07:14 pm 8
Umm… cicely (7)
Do you recall what you were doing when you were 3 or 4 years old? That’s about the period of Sarah Palin’s life everyone seems to be focussing on here. If you’ve read the comments, above, you’ll know that she was giving a speech to a group of Canadians in Calgary. I imagine she was attempting to establish some level of rapport with her audience by relating a shared experience – a trip to a Canadian Health Centre. Given her current opinion on the proposed health care scheme now being considered by the US Congress – which I understand she opposes – she noted the irony, as CIDU Bill observed.
Anything else is coming from you.
Cidu Bill Mar 20th 2010 at 07:38 pm 9
Detcord, part of what disconcerted me about this whole thing is that Palin doesn’t do intentional irony. That’s just not part of her skill set, or at least not an aspect she ever seems to have made public. Sarcasm for the purpose of illustrating a point, you betcha. But “socialized health care is an abomination and isn’t it funny that we made use of it”? Very few politicians would make that sort of observation, and Palin certainly isn’t one of them.
That being said, if she made this speech to Canadians, it does make some sort of sense. And Palin is certainly not the only politician (note Obama’s comment about the bitter Pennsylvanians) who somehow can’t grasp the concept that something said to people at point A will almost immediately be “heard” by people at point B.
Paperboy Mar 20th 2010 at 07:55 pm 10
Perhaps she thinks it’s ironic because now she thinks Canadians are coming here to get our health care, but you never know; to call her a “loose-cannon” is to overstate her caliber.
Ooten Aboot Mar 21st 2010 at 06:01 am 11
The real number of Canadians crossing the border for health care is quite small, and mostly well-off people who can pay big bucks, like the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Danny “Millions” (Williams). There’s great debate over whether his recent trip was necessary. Some Canadians are actually sent at government expense for procedures that are not available close to home, but what would you expect of a country with a population smaller than California’s spread over an area larger than the whole USA? We can’t have an MRI machine in every hamlet.
Ordinary people here actually appreciate not having to fear bankruptcy if they need a knee replacement, or by-pass surgery, or a $5,000 pacemaker battery. I just talked to a man who’s had or will soon have all of those, and he made that very point. He couldn’t dream of any of those things if he had to pay for them. Actually, he couldn’t dream of anything, because he’d have been dead by now.
I get a kick out of those commercials for medication that say “tell your doctor if you have diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney stones, athlete’s foot or whatever, as rare but serious side effects could occur.” Here, the doctor tells us that stuff because you go to the same GP every time, and the GP sends you to a specialist when you need one. I can’t imagine looking through the Yellow Pages for an orthopedic surgeon, asking the prices and whether they take Visa.
The reality is that the Canadian system, while far from perfect, gets better over-all results for much less money than the US system. Tell your Representative and your Senators that.
The Bad Seed Mar 21st 2010 at 06:34 am 12
Dear Ooten Aboot (11), if I could afford it I’d pay for your above post to be printed on the front page of every American newspaper. But, unfortunately, this is not a fight of reason, it’s primarily a political pissing match.
Detcord Mar 21st 2010 at 06:40 am 13
Cidu Bill (9)
You’ve piqued my curiosity. Who do you know that has the skill set to intentionally do unintentional irony? Seems like an oxymoron to me.
I can see where you’re coming from, if your source is the Huffington Post. They offered 2 short outtakes from Palin’s speech and, in the third paragraph, offered their acknowledged guess of her views on the Canadian Health Care system. (They decided she thought it was revolting). Why? Who knows as MSNBC, whose coverage was more extensive, reported no such expressed opinion. Perhaps the Huff-Po considers made-up news to be just as valid as reportage.
Personally, I don’t trust any news source. If the Huff-Po said she went up the hill and turned right, and the Drudge Report said she went up the hill and turned left – I’d consider it fairly reasonable to assume she went up the hill (with “fairly” reducing the strength of “reasonable”). That’s why I scan so many news sites. A facility vastly enabled by the Internet.
padraig Mar 21st 2010 at 11:23 am 14
I think the Republicans should be glad she said “ironic” instead of “ironical.”
Still haven’t heard her try to say “nuclear,” though.
Winter Wallaby Mar 21st 2010 at 12:55 pm 15
Ooten, I can see how that’s a positive, but it seems to be far outweighed by the negative of having death panels running by Nazis.
Karen Mar 21st 2010 at 02:04 pm 16
Good Lord, people, this was back when she was a child. They lived closer to a town in Canada with a hospital than they did to a hospital in Alaska, so they crossed the border and paid for health care, which you can do in Canada. You can do it in the United States, for that matter. When i was a kid and my parents sent me to live in France, I fell off my bike and ended up in the hospital, a guest of the French medical system. My host family had medical care and as they explained it, it covered me. Doesn’t mean I’m a fan of socialized medicine–the hospital was horrible. They didn’t let me bathe, and I received bare-bones treatment, and ended up with a bad scar that required plastic surgery to correct.
She’s reminiscing about her childhood, and how she used to go to Canada for health care because it was CLOSER. Not because it was better. But Canadians will travel to the US to pay for better health care than their government provides. That’s the irony.
duggie Mar 21st 2010 at 08:24 pm 17
In 2007 she told a similar anecdote, but instead of going to Canada she said she went to Juneau. So she’s probably lying anyway.
padraig Mar 21st 2010 at 09:50 pm 18
Wight Wing Wallaby, the health insurance companies don’t like it when you call them names….
Anita Mar 22nd 2010 at 02:03 am 19
Karen#16 — “She’s reminiscing about her childhood, and how she used to go to Canada for health care because it was CLOSER. Not because it was better. But Canadians will travel to the US to pay for better health care than their government provides. That’s the irony.”
… except it’s also a misconception. As Ooten Aboot said, very, very few people go south to pay for health care. I have been quite shocked by the perception of Canadian health care that my US-based work colleagues have. Honest… if someone in my family is sick and needs to see a doctor ASAP, I have always been able to get in to see our GP the same day or next day at latest. In an emergency there are hospitals and/or walk-in medical centres.
Another way to read the statement (assuming it’s not taken out of context): Isn’t it ironic that we came across the border for treatment (because it was the closest medical centre) so many years ago, but now I preach that your system of healthcare would be my worst nightmare.
Lord Jubjub Mar 22nd 2010 at 06:42 pm 20
Didn’t Canada adopt the single-payer some time in the ’70s? That means that she was going to Canada when it was similar to the U.S. system.
Cidu Bill Mar 22nd 2010 at 09:44 pm 21
Duhhh… Back in Comment 9, I meant to write “intentional irony.” I just went back and changed it, but I felt I shold confess my error.
Elyrest Mar 22nd 2010 at 11:41 pm 22
“I just went back and changed it”
Hey, no fair! We’re not allowed to edit out, sometimes very poorly spelled, comments. Yeah, yeah I know it’s your site, but that’s just …..just …. your right to do, I guess.
Cidu Bill Mar 23rd 2010 at 12:15 am 23
It was a typo. Besides, I think acknowledging the change was way fair.
FWIW, I’ve changed other people’s posts when asked.
Elyrest Mar 23rd 2010 at 12:23 am 24
Cidu Bill - I know you’ve changed other people posts before.
Would you please change the word out to our in my comment.
Thank you.
Winter Wallaby Mar 23rd 2010 at 12:56 am 25
Cidu Bill, please change this comment (#25), to something witty and funny. Maybe something with a pun.
mkilby Mar 23rd 2010 at 05:58 am 26
@ CIDU Bill (for 25) - In case you don’t have a pun on tap, here’s a relevant idea from Blackadder: “Don’t you know what ‘irony’ is?” Baldrick: “Yeah, it’s like ‘goldy’ and ‘bronzy’.”
Joshua Mar 23rd 2010 at 11:20 pm 27
duggie #17: Yes, she must be lying. It would be impossible for the Heaths to have gone to Whitehorse, Yukon, for medical care at some point in Sarah Palin’s childhood, and to Juneau, Alaska, for medical care at some other point in her childhood. I mean, whoever heard of such a thing?