Linking med-mal reform and health care reform: Michael Kinsley does a nice job of linkage in his July 10 column, A Painful Malpractice Debate in the Washington Post:

Very few winners of what the critics call the lawsuit lottery actually win enough to make it a deal they would take voluntarily. . . . So the direct effect of restricting the size of malpractice judgments would be to increase injustice, not to reduce it. Nevertheless, limits on malpractice lawsuits are a good idea that Democrats are wrong, and possibly foolish, to oppose. The current arrangement delivers justice at random, in widely varying amounts or not at all, depending on whether you're feeling litigious, how good your lawyer is or what a judge or a juror had for breakfast that day. It is less a matter of injustice than of more justice than we can afford. . . . It is a society with an odd sense of justice that awards millions of dollars to every 25th victim of what may or may not have been a botched operation but doesn't guarantee basic health care to anyone. But it is a political party with an odd sense of justice that makes a big issue of the former and basically ignores the latter. Republicans are right about malpractice reform. They may not realize quite how right they are.