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It seems clear that the RAND study shows that there is in fact increased marginal benefit if you're chronically ill and the cost of paying for your health care is significant. The abstract explicitly states that.
Further, it documents whether or not there's increased marginal benefit for free health coverage rather than copay, rather than increased medical spending. They show there's no increased marginal benefit among the affluent and the healthy, which I suppose indicates that reactive treatment works as well as preventative treatment. The study in fact shows that increased spending does help the ill, which can be inferred just by reading the abstract when they say that the free treatment as opposed to copay helps those who are ill and poor. Glancing through the paper backs this up.
The posts seem to understand this, or at least most of them do, as far as I can tell. But the sentence linking to them is at least disingenuous, if not completely in error. I can imagine that to the average person, it seems fairly obvious that more medicine does not help you when you are healthy. Which would explain why this isn't being trumpeted in the news.
I also read the post about the Framington Heart Study with some incredulity. I mean, that's an example of good science right there. Despite their preconceived notions, they found that diet did not impact blood serum cholesterol levels. They saw this, and published it. Then they expressed reservations because given current understanding of biochemistry, that made no sense. As a result, current medical literature acknowledges that and the HDL and LDL levels are emphasized for primary treatment. Which as far as I can tell, studies have repeatedly been able to link to diet. I fail to see the problem and the anti-medicine trial spin given in the post is bizarre as it's a perfect example of good science, good methodology, good data leading to improved medical knowledge and nutritional advice. That's the whole point, is it not?