The Wall Street Journal reports that the United Auto Workers union is pushing General Motors, Ford and Chrysler  to put all their employees and union-affiliated retirees under one healthcare cooperative,  ”creating a powerful purchasing group that could upend traditional healthcare markets.”

The group could total nearly 1 million members, “a scale it believes would have unprecedented leverage in negotiating directly with hospitals, drug companies and others.”  It could take a year or two for this to happen, but if it does, it could accelerate the undermining of traditional health-insurance companies and give a big  promotional push to the struggling private-sector-union movement.