Being from Europe, the concept of annual check ups sounds very wasteful. Is this what everyone does in the US?
As far as I see it, schools should teach enough to keep you in a good baseline health and doctors are available if something comes up. What is done in a normal annual check up?
I haven't been to a doctor for a "check-up" since I was a kid. Probably been nearly four decades now.
I think for growing kids it's probably a good thing -- if nothing else to be sure you're on schedule for various vaccines.
As an adult, I have regular dental care but I do not see an MD unless I am sick or injured. And "sick" does not include colds/sore throat -- there are good OTC meds for that.
For most people, if you feel "normal", aren't gaining or losing weight unexpectedly, don't tire more easily than normal, your blood pressure is OK, etc. your health is likely fine.
Just to expand on this, Europeans do get doctor's visits every now and then even if there's nothing clearly wrong, as sick leaves extending a couple of days usually requires a medical certificate. This doesn't obviously usually include blood analysis or other such tests though.
Disclaimer: I'm extrapolating from personal experience of a handful of countries, this of course doesn't necessarily apply to all of Europe.
Wow, I had no idea this wasn't a universal thing! Thanks for asking the question. From some brief Googling, it seems Canada also recommends against an annual health check, and I saw an article in NYTimes arguing against them, too. Fascinating.
In Germany everybody over 35 is advised to do such a check-up every two years, plus a bunch of different cancer screenings and twice-yearly dental examinations. I would say about a third of the people actually use those offerings.
It seems to vary between two extremes - people who do it and people who will only reluctantly visit a doctor when at death's door.
I think the former stems from annual checkups in childhood.
Some insurance providers/employers, I suspect for preventative reasons against the latter category above, have started incentivizing annual physicals, so this may shift, but the whole US healthcare system is in such flux I wouldn't put money down on any outcome.
For me, I use my annual checkup to get data (i.e. lipid and comp panels, etc, hearing test, electrocardiogram, urinalysis) on myself so I have a baseline of what the data looks like when I'm healthy. Everyone has slightly different baselines, so it's nice to have a better picture/time-series of mine.
I guess a minority by population. I needed to make an appointment a couple years ago and the woman on the other end of the phone didn't really believe me that I didn't know where my medical records would be (in the past 10 years I'd had some stitches and a tetanus shot).
They test for the symptoms of serious chronic health issues: blood pressure, urinalysis, blood sugar, cholesterol levels/ratios, joint reflexes, retina appearance, manual check for swollen tissues... things that might signal underlying conditions.
As far as I see it, schools should teach enough to keep you in a good baseline health and doctors are available if something comes up. What is done in a normal annual check up?