Every year in the US most americans get an annual physical from our doctor if we have insurance. It usually consists of getting some bloodwork done, vitals basic questions etc. Then going over those results and any concerns you may have and nothing else.
I always hear those horror stories of people just all of a sudden being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and theres nothing that can be done. Maybe im missing something.
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The main reason is that insurance won’t cover it unless there is a reason to. The tests to search for 100s of different types of cancers are not cheap. Even tests like routine colonoscopies are a hassle to get insurance to cover unless you meet certain criteria. Must be 40 or older unless you have a family history and then it is 35.
Second is the rate of false positives is fairly high when doing tests for broad spectrum things without having a reason to look for something specific. A [study](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0281153) done on rates of false positives for 5 types of cancer and 6 STIs found that 85.5% of women and 38.6% of men will recieve a false positive.
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