Jane Brody's "Personal Health" column appears under the headline "What I Wish I'd Known About My Knees." It reports on arthroscopic surgery and steroid injections for knee troubles. The column reports: "Many of the procedures people undergo to counter chronic knee pain in the hopes of avoiding a knee replacement have limited or no evidence to support them. Some enrich the pockets of medical practitioners while rarely benefiting patients for more than a few months."
Left entirely unexplored in the column, alas, is the question of whether Medicare and Medicaid cover these treatments. If Congressional Republicans or President Trump proposed to reduce such spending, doubtless Democrats would accuse them of mean-spiritedly trying to deprive poor and elderly people of necessary medical care (an accusation that Mitt Romney also foolishly made against President Obama back in 2012). Actually, one needn't even speculate: one might just consult Paul Krugman's recent column: "Republicans start from a sort of baseline of cruelty toward the less fortunate, of hostility toward anything that protects families against catastrophe."
Anyway, the Times column is a fine reminder that more spending on medical care doesn't necessarily translate into improved health. It would be great if the newspaper incorporated more of that perspective into the debate over health care policy and spending in Washington, rather than confining it to the "personal health" column.