Medicare for All will get a full committee hearing Tuesday, which means the idea of enrolling everybody in a single, government-run insurance plan is about to get more serious attention on Capitol Hill than it has in at least 50 years .

To be clear, Tuesdays hearing wont be in one of the committees that actually write health care legislation. Their leaders dont want a serious discussion of Medicare for All right now and neither does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). She thinks Democrats should focus on defending and improving the Affordable Care Act, the program she was instrumental in passing and that Republicans continue to attack.

But Pelosi and her lieutenants cant keep Medicare for All out of the spotlight entirely, because the idea has too much support within the caucus and with Democratic voters around the country.

That says a lot about how far the Medicare for All movement has come, even if it still has a very long way to go.

Only a few years ago, almost nobody with power in Washington was talking about junking private insurance and replacing it with a single, government-run plan. But Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made Medicare for All a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, and the idea has gotten much more visible support since then in no small part because so many people are still dealing with high premiums, high deductibles and seemingly arbitrary denials of coverage.

Few people can speak to these issues with the authority of Ady Barkan, a progressive activist with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrigs disease) who has struggled to get approval for treatments that help keep him alive.

Barkan will be among those testifying on Tuesday despite leadership efforts, first reported by HuffPosts Matt Fuller , to keep the most committed Medicare for All proponents off the panel.