Most of the comparisons between Canada and the U.S. are little more than academic exercises, and while the author of this article has generally done a pretty thorough analysis, there is still no point in trying to compare the two nations. First and foremost, the United States does not have a "health care system" -- this is a silly catch-phrase used by people looking to pursue an agenda one way or another ("The U.S. health care system is in crisis," "The U.S. health care system is the best in the world," etc.). In the U.S., health care encompasses a broad area of numerous inter-related sectors of the economy. Therefore, comparisons between "their system" and "our system" are pretty pointless.
Using life expectancy statistics to compare the quality of health care between countries is also misleading, since these statistics do not account for the impact that variations in infrastructure, personal health, and social pathologies such as drug abuse, alcoholism, etc. have on these statistics.
This article also neglects to mention the most important factor in the health care cost differential between the U.S. and Canada. Health care does not cost less in Canada because Canada has a single-payer system. You can implement a single-payer system in the U.S. tomorrow, and the savings (due to reduced "overhead," paperwork, etc.) would be negligible. Health care costs less in Canada because the single payer is a government office/agency that is immune from lawsuits by the patients that are treated in the system. This is precisely why any attempt to implement a single-payer system in the United States always includes an item that receives very little attention -- indemnification for the government against lawsuits.
This is something to think about the next time someone like Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton claims that patients should be allowed to sue their HMOs. These people are not consistent, because they do not believe that patients should be allowed to sue their HMOs if the HMO in question is the U.S. government.