Nick Kristoff of the NYT touts Cuba’s health-care paradise in his column today–he says that infant-mortality rates are lower there than they are in the United States, and says what a shame it is that a great country like America can’t post better numbers. He even suggests the problem is that we spend too much money on warplanes. What he doesn’t explain is that, 1) the United States handles high-risk pregnancies very well (i.e., American doctors and nurses save preemies that wouldn’t have a prayer in Havana), and 2) American women are delaying childbirth into their 30s and 40s and thereby putting themselves in the position of having larger numbers of high-risk pregnancies — a state of affairs that may or may not be regrettable, but which certainly is more the result of personal decisions rather than the quality of American health care (except to the extent that our medical system is good enough to make such choices possible).