Of course. Medical care aims to provide for the health and welfare of the people. It's what we organize governments to deliver. Getting Democrats to refute the term is a trick that's designed to negate the proposition that the agents of government have any obligations and to affirm, on the other hand, that the main purpose of government is punitive.
Conservative politicians have been using the welfare designation in a pejorative sense for decades to get out of having to deliver services they don't want to deliver.
It's a two-fer. It gets Democrats riled up and it gets conservative politicians out of doing what they're hired to do. Also, it serves as a distraction during debates.
"Preserving Medicare for those who need it," as Paul Ryan (R-WI) suggests, is a meaningless assertion since only the sick and injured need medical/surgical care to begin with. However, in uttering the platitude, the speaker implies that some people who don't need medical care are getting it-- despite not being injured or because they don't deserve it. It's like a wife-killer saying he did it out of love.
Conservatives have learned to say things in the expectation that progressives will refute them and thus express assent with something they don't actually agree with. It's one of the advantages of living in a bi-polar world. Everything is either/or. If you're not for one thing, then you're for the other.
What's the opposite of well being (welfare)? Deprivation. Conservatives are in favor of depriving people of life, liberty and peace of mind (the security of the person). So, if we adopt their mode of thinking and argument, the logical positive statement to make about Ryan is that he's aiming to deprive people of health by denying them appropriate medical care. Moreover, that's particularly true in regard to persons of the female gender and persons afflicted with deficits from birth.
Congressman Ryan needs to be retired. After almost 12 years on the job, he still doesn't know what his job entails.
How to explain the dufuses Wisconsinites have been electing? Generous people have a hard time seeing that other people are just plain mean.