Your comment was not the only thing I was referring to with respect to efforts to undermine life expectancy as a measure of the relative strength or weakness of a given health care system. I have seen many other examples, not necessarily posted here, attempting to do the same thing.

I take responsibility only for what I have posted myself. Life expectancy is certainly a widely accepted indicator of quality of life in a society, along with other factors such as GDP, infant mortality, and the like. And there is almost always a positive correlation between the quality of health care and life expectancy. This does not say that life expectancy cannot be affected by factors other than the quality of health care.

Besides the "boost" given to Canada's life expectancy because of the reduced rate of fatal gunplay is not all that substantial. Take the 30,000 deaths you cite from gun violence, assume those people have a life expectancy of 20 years instead of the US average of 78.1. Do a little arithmetic, assume those people are not gunned down, but rather survive to the national average. The impact of that change on the average US life expectancy is approximately .005 years. In other words, assume those gun related deaths do not occur - the US avg life expactancy goes from 78.1 years to 78.106 years. Still a long way to go to close the gap between US and Canadian life expectancies.

Apparently you like to do very little arithmetic. Unfortunately, that is not the way life expectancy is calculated. I gave you a reference to an actuarial treatment of the problem. He says that firearm fatalities subtract 104 days from the life expectancy of the average American. That is .285 years so your calculation is off by two orders of magnitude from the actuarial calculation of life expectancy.

The annual probability of death qₓʿⁿʾ can be decomposed into two terms: qₓʿⁿʾ = qₓʿ¹ʾ + qₓʿ²ʾ, where qₓʿ¹ʾ denotes the probability that an individual of age x dies from a firearm injury within a year, whereas qₓʿ²ʾ is the probability of dying from any other cause. These probabilities are then integrated from 0 to ∞ to find the probability of dying at any particular age. One finds the difference in life expectancy by simply removing qₓʿ¹ʾ from the equation and recalculating.

The current (2008 World Fact Book) estimate of US life expectancy is 78.06 years (down slightly; the current US military involvements don't help life expectancy either); for Canada it is 80.34. Even increasing the US figure to 78.35 doesn't do much to close the gap, but it would move the US up a couple of places in the standings.

I also do understand that the corporations are in the business to make a profit - self evident really. What may not be so apparent is that a sizable portion of Canada's health care system and the expenditures is actually through private for profit corporations and companies. It is not fair to say that all of Canada's health care expenditures are of the "not for profit" variety.

Every state-run health-care system that I am familiar with has a parallel private, for-profit system that those who do not wish to be part of the public plan may use if they wish to pay for it. The public plan may also refer patients to private specialists and pay for it. These private systems essentially operate in competition (and sometimes cooperation) with the public system. The problem with the private-only system that most of the US populace operates under is that there is no incentive anywhere in the system to hold down costs. The doctors, hospitals and clinics simply charge more for their services and the insurers simply charge their clients higher premiums for their coverage. The only place where costs are likely to be cut is by insurers denying services to their clients. This is their only area in which to increase profits, and increasing profits is what business is all about.

The basic point I was making was that Canada's health care system is cheaper, broader and by the simplest metric I can think at least the equal of that in the US, if not arguably better. The entrenched corporate interests in the US put profits over the general welfare every time. They are aided and assisted in this by politicians of all stripes. A sizable portion of the American population is either too thick or too disinterested to take note and to demand better.
— Disraeli

With this I agree completely.