Technically, you only have to pull between the adjacent boxes on either end. If you always put a junction box where the cable enters the wall, and make your connections there, and it has a cover plate, you are talking about, st most, the distance between the junction box and the first outlet, or the distance between outlest, worth of cable replacement, since they are end-pointed each time they enter a junction or outlet box.
Doing the fitting through a hole cut with a keyhole saw is relatively easy, and you've got the junction and other outlet box open for the re-pull of the wire, so you have access, assuming grommeted boxed, to move the conduit horizontally in the wall to make the connection. Appleton, Thomas & Betts, and others all sell grometted PVC junction and outlet boxes that would permit this.
It's tough for me to get excited by dry-walling in an area which is using wood panelling, and so would be very expensive to repair. But even without that as an added cost, the color matching for spot painting, or the repainting of the whole wall, kind of offset the relative cheapness of the drywall work for painted walls.
I typically used 3/4 PVC conduit, which is rated for NM-B Romex, but then most of my work has been places like ski areas, which are in fact commercial (which answers the other posters comment about 24" not being necessary for non-fire walls in residential. But of course, if you have an oven on the other side of the wall, it *is* a fire wall.
If you have a single level house with attic access, you can always do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27uUb2SSCOU
But the situation wasn't really defined that narrowly. If I'm in the center floor in a house with a second story and a finished basement, my way works better. If I'm in the center floor of a house with a second floor and an unfinished basement, I could push the Romex up without a conduit instead of dropping it down without a conduit, but if a future resident finisheshes the basement later, they are screwed. It's better to plan ahead for modifications.
PS: All that said, it's also generally a good idea for steel-stud construction to grommet an unused set of holes and run two lines of plastic twine through it, in case you need to lay Cat 6 or home theater, or other wiring at some future point, and you don't want to tear the crap out of your walls. For stick-built, you can drill holes and plate-protect them to do the same thing, but in commercial, I'd once again do conduit.