Wow - talk about nailing an important question.
This is fairly contentious of course, but I do remember feeling enraged following my first delve into the likely outcomes of treating my T2DM diagnosis as I was being encouraged to, with meds.
The conclusion I came to was that even with a well controlled blood glucose level - the medical outcomes didn't seem to change..
so, that was the starting point for me trying to understand what "insulin resistance" was...
and the simple answer directly is that anything you can do to reduce carbs will lower your insulin and blood sugar - in the long term it's elevated blood glucose that the medical profession worries about - damage to all sorts of things from too much blood glucose doing what glucose does, glycating everything...
But - the issue is that most long term health issues are also associated with elevated insulin and elevated glucose, so as T2 (and absolutely the opposite of T1) we need to be looking at lowering insulin as well...
How do you do that? - by lowering carbs, particularly sugars and starches (which get turned into sugars)
So - I kind of agree - Glycaemic control is not the game you want to play, but lowering your blood glucose and insulin is..
... taking meds doesn't get in the way of doing this, but many of us here on the forum have found ways (different ways, there are no 100% sure methods, because we are all so different)
But the key take away is yes - it really does make a difference, and despite the stats, even the fact that you're here puts you on a better path, hope that helps...