Time for your annual physical? Don't bother!
The annual physical may be obsolete according to this New York Times story (registration required):
Checkups for people with no medical complaint remain the single most common reason for visiting a doctor, according to surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2000, they accounted for about 64 million office visits, out of 823.5 million visits over all. At $120 to $150 per visit (and $2,000 or so for the gold-plated "executive physical" that many companies offer to top executives), that adds up to more than $7 billion a year.
Yet in a series of reports that began in 1989 and is still continuing, an expert committee sponsored by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services, found little support for many of the tests commonly included in a typical physical exam for symptomless people.