On Wednesday, the presidential candidates turned Joe Wurzelbacher into a walking metaphor for health care reform--dubbing him Joe the Plumber in hypotheticals.

Despite this temporary fascination with the hospital bills and health insurance costs, the sympathetic metaphor won't last long. To get a little more perspective on the problem, GalleyCat interviewed Dr. Sherwin Nuland, author of the upcoming book, The Soul of Medicine: Tales from the Bedside, about his advice for the presidential candidates.

"I would say to McCain, 'Release your medical records in their entirety. You owe it to the American voters,'" explained Dr. Nuland. "We should know what his malignant melanoma looked like under a microscope. JFK was the last president with hidden health records and we found out after his assassination that he had serious medical problems."

As for the Democratic candidate, the doctor also had advice for the Democratic candidate: "I would say to Obama, 'You are guilty of speaking vaguely when speaking about health coverage for all Americans. Get specific.'" More presidential health care advice after the jump...

The doctor concluded:

"The single most misunderstood health care issue right now is that no one knows what we mean by the term 'health care.' We don't know its limits. And we don't recognize that it occurs in the context of an individual patient's life experience and present socio-economic situation. I've been following the universal health care debate since the 1940s when the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill was introduced. We have yet to come face-to-face with the issues or the definition of the term. The lack of a proper definition, I am afraid, will lead to inadequate coverage."