Scott Olson via Getty Images Former President Barack Obama speaks to students at the University of Illinois on September 7, 2018, in Urbana, Illinois.

Former President Barack Obama called “Medicare for all” a “good new idea” on Friday afternoon, providing a high-profile boost to the nascent progressive movement pushing the policy. In a speech at the University of Illinois, Obama argued that Democrats were innovating policies aimed at addressing the unique economic challenges facing young people, who in many cases do not have the same opportunities as their parents’ generation. “It’s harder for young people to save for a rainy day, let alone retirement,” he said. “So Democrats aren’t just running on good old ideas like a higher minimum wage, they’re running on good new ideas like Medicare for all, giving workers seats on corporate boards, reversing the most egregious corporate tax cuts to make sure college students graduate debt-free.” Medicare for all is what progressive activists and lawmakers call a single-payer health care system. In such a system, which has become a top priority for parts of the Democratic Party base, Americans would receive health care coverage from the same federal program. Obama’s complimentary remarks about Medicare for all, while not exactly a dramatic departure from his previous comments, represent the most significant establishment imprimatur for a policy that most mainstream elected Democrats viewed as fringe as recently as three years ago. During her presidential primary contest against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who went on to defeat Sanders and clinch the nomination, said that Medicare for all would “never, ever come to pass.” Obama, by contrast, has never dismissed the idea out of hand. While discussing the Affordable Care Act at a May 2009 town hall, Obama said, “If I were starting a system from scratch then I think that the idea of moving toward a single-payer system could very well make sense.” “That’s the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world,” he continued. “The only problem is that we’re not starting from scratch.” It’s a sentiment Obama repeated as recently as January 2017.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks during a Senate Budget Committee markup in November 2017. His presidential run brought Medicare for all into the political mainstream.

Obama’s remarks were greeted with a mix of reactions from progressive activists on social media, some of whom asked why the former president had not backed the policy sooner. “I can think of about 8 reasons why this is infuriating for people like me to hear him say now, but I sure am glad he said it,” tweeted Dan Riffle, a congressional aide to Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the House’s lead co-sponsor of single-payer legislation. In a follow-up interview, Riffle, who previously worked for former Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), a longtime champion of Medicare for all, was more effusive in his response. “There’s a very good chance that this is a watershed moment in the single-payer movement,” Riffle said. He noted that Obama’s stamp of approval could win over some Democrats who reflexively oppose ideas championed by Sanders. “It’s one of the things that can go a long way to heal that rift between people in the party,” he said.

Thank you President Obama for supporting Medicare for All.



His support takes us another step toward ensuring that no one in the richest country in the history of the world has to forego health care because they cannot afford it. https://t.co/LK449oQ4ai — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 7, 2018