Do health reform and malpractice reform fit together?

A frequent claim among critics of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is that they would have been more likely to support "real health care reform" if it included malpractice reform. Indeed, many Republicans argued that health care spending and defensive medicine could be controlled only if the PPACA included comprehensive malpractice reform. House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) offered a health reform bill in the fall of 2009 that included a series of conventional restrictions on lawsuits, including a one-year statute of limitations on medical malpractice claims involving adult patients (with a longer and more complicated period for claims involving children), a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages recoverable from all sources for the same injury, and a sliding-scale limit on lawyers' contingent fees, with a maximum of 15 percent of any amount recovered in excess of $600,000.