[tptacek]

Medicare isn't "welfare", it's the standard American health system for people over the age of 65. Moreover, there's no good-faith way to call it "welfare". Please stop doing this here; you have other venues for this kind of rhetoric.

[somecontext]

> Moreover, there's no good-faith way to call [Medicare] "welfare".

For some context, Wikipedia says:

> In the United States, depending on the context, the term "welfare" ... can also include social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance, Social Security, and Medicare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_spending#United_States

[tptacek]

No. Not in the context Rayiner meant it, where there's policy discretion about who gets it, the way you might apply work requirements to SNAP.

[somecontext]

I don't think "policy discretion to deny" is what the word "welfare" means.

But in any case, Medicare is literally denied to prisoners, which is an example of ... denying welfare benefits for antisocial behavior?

[tptacek]

The entire thread is about the discretion to deny services.

[rayiner]

Medicare is obviously welfare! It’s a socialized system that involves society paying for medical care for old people, instead of leaving old people or their families to pay for it themselves.

[rayiner]

Medicare is obviously welfare! It’s a socialized system where society pays for medical care for old people, instead of leaving old people or their families to pay for it themselves.

Of course whenever you have taxpayers paying for something for individuals, those taxpayers may properly decide to exclude undeserving individuals from receiving benefits.

[tzs]

Excluding undeserving individuals from government benefits is not controversial.

What would be controversial is classifying people as undeserving for past actions that

(1) were and are completely legal,

(2) are not even considered to be bad by a large fraction of the country, and

(3) have nothing whatsoever to do with what they are being excluded from.

[tptacek]

Well over 90% of Americans aged over 65 are Medicare beneficiaries, most of them having paid into the program throughout their whole lives. I think this argument is probably better suited to your twitter TL.