SS and Medicare are not entitlements (handouts), like food stamps, Sec.-8 housing and others.
The former two are paid for by employed workers and their employers; plus, the retirees on SS pay taxes on their monthly income and Medicare premiums are deducted, as well.
“SS and Medicare are not entitlements ...”
Label them any way you wish. They are horrible anti-freedom programs.
Can you choose not to participate? No.
Is the money which is confiscated from you and your employer in a ‘lock box’ somewhere with your name on it? No.
Yes, of course SS (SSI) is used for ‘handouts’ for phony disabilities and many other things.
If you pay into SS all you life and then you tip over before collecting any payments, assuming you are single at the time, who gets the money? Somebody in your will? Hell no. They keep it.
You can choose to defend them if you like, and I’m not quite sure your are doing so. But these programs which nobody in a Free Republic should endorse for painfully obvious reasons.
Forced participation socialist programs are at least not unconstitutional if they are inventions of individual states. So that is where this type of social justice warrior / phony safety net junk belongs - though I would vote against them at that level too.
My biggest pet peeve with regard to these awful programs is that many other reasonable folks somehow have their minds twisted such that they think of them as compatible with Christian-like charity. Which is about as wrong of an interpretation of Christianity as one could assert.
Not to mention, of course, they are tragically inefficient.