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It sounds to me like you have way more time to play then the average player.
While I certainly put quite a bit of time in on Friday during levelling, to be fair during launch weekend my time averaged somewhere between 6-8 hours a day at varoius times throughout the day -- and since monday it's more like 2-4. I don't see it as unheared of to play more on launch day. My levelling speed had more to do with the fact that I've levelled 3 chars to from 70-80 including this exact same Paladin already before the expansion went live, and it was FAR slower than most of the people in the same situation since I didn't play for 10-12 hours a day every day of launch-weekend. I do see the point you're trying to make, but given the actual amount of time that I play I can't personally accept it as a valid reason for the apparent ease of obtaining materials, since the average high school age kid (one of WoW's larger demographics) probably averages more hours a week than I do.
Someone at level 73 could run circles around the Basin collecting Saronite, Titanium, and eternals and be in the position to have all of their Tempered Titansteel gear crafted for them after a 4 hour weekend evening session which is not only very doable for the vast majority of players, it's commonplace.
While there were excellent craftable epics in TBC, you couldn't farm their mats in 4 hours (while at ANY level from 60-70) and then spend a couple weeks transmuting. Most of them (with the very notable exception of the tailoring epics) were pattern drops. It's not like you could pick up Bracers of the Green Fortress off of a vendor or from a trainer. Some of the more notable trainer-epics came later in content patches that required pretty nice rep levels with various factions to pick up.
My main point has been summed up well by jeromesimina. Everything is BoE and available from a trainer so far. Hardcore (all day), casual (a few hours every couple of days), or somewhere in between like me, people who go to work, come home, have a life, and find a brief bit of time alone at the end of the day -- it's all available to everyone. Not only that, but the mats are 10x easier to get than in TBC, and the "difficult" mats to get are now buyable.
I agree that there are less craftable items that are itemized for healing Paladins than tanking Paladins (or itemized well at least) but there are some pieces available across the various professions. Further, there are ample choices of exceptional quest reward items for healing Paladins at 80.
While all of the jewelcrafting items may take some time to filter to the non-JCers, I don't see it being too long. I can understand someone who only has time to log once every few days or on the weekends needing a good while to get these items, but if you can muster up even 20 minutes of time each day to play (which is not an unheared of idea, and is by no means something that the average casual player is unable to do) it really doesn't take long. In a couple of weeks, a tanking jewelcrafter has all the patterns they could possibly want for personal use AND a full set of unique(3) prismatics. The actual mats it takes to craft them are easy to come by at any level from 70 up, so they can make the BoE ones for all of their tank friends with their mats. Same goes for DPSers, healers, etc. It's not like they require mats that will restrict who can get them. All Northrend ore can be mined at a rate of 5+ stacks an hour.. most eternals (with the possible exception of Fire) can be obtained at a rate of almost 10+ an hour. Even Frozen Orbs are buyable. The huge ore lode translates to tons of gems.
I'm not saying that it's too easy to gear up. Far from it. I'm all for people getting gear that doesn't make them feel gimped to start in. If it sounds like I'm ranting against this, nothing could be farther from the truth. I'm just reporting the fruits of my research, that everyone -- even people with relatively little time to play -- should be able to get some awesome gear VERY fast. Some classes/specs (plate tanks for example) are in a position to be geared to the teeth of of trainer recipes, others are in a position to get some might fine gear now too, but can likely expect quite a bit more when craft patterns start dropping.