I'll have what he's having...

Also via CJR (discussing a recent Bill Moyers piece):

Journal correspondent Rick Karr asked viewers to consider a hypothetical cardiac patient—a sixty-seven-year old man in a high stress job with a history of serious heart problems. The man has had four major heart attacks and a quadruple bypass; he has atrial fibrillation and needs a defibrillator to keep his heart on track. That man, says intensive care nurse Geri Jenkins, might have a hard time getting new insurance if he needed it.

The man, it turns out, is not a hypothetical patient, but [Vice President] Cheney, who has Cadillac coverage that buys Cadillac care simply because he is an employee of the U.S. government. He cannot be denied health insurance no matter how serious his heart condition; he can pick the best hospitals and the best doctors, and, according to the nurses, Cheney is alive today because of that care while many other people with similar conditions are not. The nurses have launched a CheneyCare ad campaign in newspapers and on the Internet, designed to make the argument for a radical change in America’s health care system—a change that would allow everyone to get the kind of care that saved Cheney’s life. Their ads declare that if Cheney were just a regular American, he’d probably be dead by now.

[snip]

On the Moyers program, DeMoro argues that there should no double standard. “We as the public pay for Dick Cheney’s care—Why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?” she asks. And indeed, that is a key question neither the candidates nor the media have discussed during the campaign so far. Health care equity rarely comes up.