GORHAM, N.H. — Jeb Bush defended comments he made Wednesday night in which he seemed to advocate the “phasing out” of Medicare, after he was confronted during a town hall here Thursday afternoon by an elderly woman who said she was worried about losing benefits.

“We’re not going to have adequate coverage for our children or our grandchildren without Medicare. I paid into that for years and years, just like all these other seniors here, and now you want to take it away?” said the woman, who did not identify herself and left before the town hall concluded. “Why are you always attacking the seniors?”

“Well, I’m not,” Bush responded. “Here’s what I said: I said, ‘We’re going to have to reform our entitlement system.’ We have to.”

“It’s not an entitlement,” the woman shot back. “I earned that.”

“It’s an actuarially unsound health care system,” said Bush, who said something must be done before the system burdens future generations with $50 billion of debt. “Social Security is an underfunded retirement system; people have put money into it, for sure.

“The people that are receiving these benefits, I don’t think that we should touch that; but your children and grandchildren are not going to get the benefit of this that they believe they’re going to get, or that you think they’re going to get, because the amount of money put in compared to the amount of money the system costs is wrong.”

While the questioner’s identity was not verified, Bush’s communications director, Tim Miller, dismissed her as a “liberal activist” on Twitter during the town hall.

The woman who pressed Bush on the matter here Thursday afternoon noted that she saw the comments earlier in the day on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

As he was pressed, Bush sought to divert attention from his comments, focusing on the media’s fixation on them, alleging that MSNBC and the media presented “words taken out of context — exactly what I predicted would happen.”

While Miller explained that Bush was attempting to reference “the way we look at entitlements,” not a full program, and argued that it wouldn’t make sense for a candidate to announce a hugely controversial policy position by slipping it into an answer at a town hall, it appears Bush is more frustrated that Democrats took his words literally, not “out of context.”

Bush’s initial comments came during a town hall the night before in Manchester, when he said, in the context of comments about reforming Medicare, “We need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something — because they’re not going to have anything.”

That drew a swift response from the Democratic National Committee last night.

“If Jeb Bush is president, people who are working hard now, playing by the rules, putting in long hours, and saving for their retirement, won’t have the same health benefits that seniors rely on,” said the DNC’s Holly Shulman in a statement Wednesday night. “It’s as simple as that.”

On Thursday as he addressed the woman’s concerns, Bush tried to steer the conversation back toward consensus, explaining that reformsare essential to making Medicare solvent for future generations.

“We need to protect it for people that have it, and we need to make sure we reform it for people that are expecting it,” Bush said. “There are solutions to this.”

Bush wasn’t asked about the comments during two earlier stops on Thursday at a country store in Littleton and a VFW post in Lancaster, part of a retail-heavy swing across New Hampshire’s “North Country.”

Following the town hall when he took questions from reporters, Bush again blasted the Democratic attack machine for “demoniz[ing]” anyone who addresses the problem.

“That’s just ridiculous,” he said. “We need to have a grown-up conversation about these issues.”