At a recent stop on her "Going Rogue" book tour, Sarah Palin told Canadian comedian Mary Walsh that Canada should get rid of its public health care system.

Walsh is the co-creator and star of This Hour Has 22 Minutes -- a nightly news parody show in the same vein as The Daily Show -- and she arrived in character, as the conservative Marg Delahunty, to the Borders where Palin (the "Alaskan Aphrodite") was signing books.

"I just wanted to ask you if you have any words of encouragement for Canadian conservatives who have worked so hard to try to diminish the kind of socialized medicine we have up there." Walsh shouted to Palin as she approached the table.

Palin suggested that Canada should get rid of its public health care system. "Keep the faith" Palin said, "because common sense conservatism can be plugged in there in Canada too. In fact, Canada needs to reform its health care system and let the private sector take over some of what the government has absorbed."

Raw Story points out that it is unlikely this plan will go over well among Canadians -- even among conservatives.


A recent study found that 90 percent of Canadians support universal, single-payer health care. A poll taken last summer shows 82 percent of Canadians believe their health care system to be better than the US's, despite constant grumbling about waiting times for treatment of non-life-threatening conditions.

While the system has longer waiting periods for certain elective surgeries, research suggests that Canadians do enjoy better access to care and "superior" health outcomes compared to Americans. According to a Commonwealth Fund of deaths that could have been prevented "with access to quality medical care in the leading 19 industrialized countries," the United States ranked last and Canada came in sixth.

This is Palin's second brush with Canadian comedians. Last November a comedian from Montreal convinced the former governor she was speaking with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.