You got your liberals. You got your conservatives. And then you got me.

The liberal and conservative positions on health care have found a meeting point that could solve the whole thing. Trouble is, nobody seems to realize it but me.

As detailed this morning on NPR and in The New Yorker some months ago, the reformist position is that letting doctors do as many procedures as they wish, and agreeing to pay for them whether they were necessary or not, is financially wasteful and can even hurt outcomes by violating the old if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it rule. The conservative position is that limiting civil damages in malpractice lawsuits is the way to bring down costs.

Suppose the reformists snapped their fingers and fewer avoidable procedures were performed. Hey presto, there would then be fewer bad results over which to sue. The average award wouldn't fall, but there would be fewer awards.

Health care reform and tort reform are not incompatible. Here's hoping our leaders are sharp enough to see this, and make it the basis of ongoing deal-making.