alt Hacker News> Right now we're often in a situation where the only data you have is expensive tests ran when you're sick enough to justify them, when it may already be too late.
In the USA, an annual physical includes a good deal of blood tests covered 100% by ACA-compliant insurance plans. The problem is most people don't do it.
As a person with a few chronic conditions, I'm getting bloodwork done every few months at the cost to me of $5/mo (heavily discounted by my insurer's portion of the payment).
What I have found is people who complain about the cost of the tests either don't have insurance (with many excuses for that: I'm too healthy, I can't afford it, doctors are for sick people, etc.) or don't go to the doctor, even though they pay a healthy percentage of their income for the privilege.
Health Insurance is too expensive to not use it. Get every bit of free benefit out of your insurer as you can (gym memberships, annual physicals, drug/alcohol counselling, lots of screenings and vaccines, etc), and if they are going to charge you and/or your employer to the tune of $2000/mo, fucking use it!
Even those annual blood tests can be problematic.
When I first started getting annual blood tests there were two values in particular that were consistently elevated. A bunch more tests and some specialist visits later the explanation was that I have a harmless genetic mutation that just causes those values to be high.
A few years back I had some different values pop high. They implied scary things. More specialist visits than before. A lot more tests. After months of that all of the scary things were eventually ruled out. And then the values went back to normal. Nobody has an explanation even now.
This is just with a pretty standard battery of tests: CBC with differential, comprehensive metabolic panel, lipid panel, TSH with reflex, vitamin D. They catch enough bad things that they're generally worth ordering on a regular basis for healthy people at annual physicals. The occasional wild goose chases like what happened with me is the price we pay for catching the more serious things.
I guess we'll see just how valuable monthly whole body ultrasounds are. There's a real risk that it will catch a lot of benign things without catching enough serious things.