Another mile marker passed on the road to nationalized healthcare:

Two once-implacable foes in the business world found common ground yesterday, at least for a few minutes, as they publicly pledged to work together for the first time to fix what they called the nation’s health-care crisis by 2012.

At a news conference on Capitol Hill, Wal-Mart chief executive H. Lee Scott sat at one end of a table and vowed to put aside differences to “drive this debate forward.” On the other end was Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and frequent Wal-Mart critic, declaring he had made a “tough choice” in the goal to improve coverage.

How this unlikely alliance came about illustrates the deepening concern that businesses, labor groups and lawmakers have over skyrocketing health-care costs. The issue has divided the nation’s largest retailer and the SEIU, which founded a group called Wal-Mart Watch that has harshly criticized the company’s wages and benefits. But yesterday they said they could come together under the broad umbrella of universal health care. And each realized it could not be achieved without the other’s help.

“That’s what makes it powerful,” Stern said in a phone interview. “It’s risky, and it’s right.”

Note the Statist-media spin here: A union corrupted by politics that thinks the answer to everything is the immediate infusion of Uncle Sam’s Cock joins forces with a corporate behemoth that realizes going along with a tide will shut people up, and it’s portrayed as “awww, how sweet!  They put aside their differences for the greater good!”.  Disgusting…

Like I said, “universal” healthcare will arrive as a sop to big business.