President Obama said in a radio interview airing Tuesday that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. would approve of his signature health care reform law.

“Oh, he would like that,” Obama told radio hosts Tom Joyner and Sybil Wilkes in an interview from the White House. “Well, because I think he understood that health care, health security is not a privilege; it’s something that in a country as wealthy as ours, everybody should have access to.”

The comments came amid a broader push by the administration to tie implementation of the Affordable Care Act to the week-long celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, which has drawn civil rights leaders and activists from across the country to Washington.