Regular Checkups Are Cheaper Than Emergency Treatments
Nobody enjoys sitting in a doctor's waiting room, but some visits are worth making before anything hurts. Prevention is boring — and it works best when it is specific: the checks recommended for your age, sex and risk, such as blood pressure and cancer screening, plus dental and eye checks at the interval your dentist or optician sets. These catch some problems while they are still simpler to deal with. Many are set by national programmes: see screenings on schedule.
A yearly "panel of everything" is a different thing. A Cochrane review of general health checks in adults without symptoms found little or no effect on deaths, and every extra test adds a chance of a false alarm and more tests after it. Ask your doctor which checks are due for you; how to read the results is on how to read a blood test.
Think of it as maintenance for the one machine you cannot replace: you service a car on its schedule, not by taking every part apart each year.
Living experience
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Skipped my annual bloodwork for three years running because I felt fine. When I finally went, my cholesterol was high enough that my doctor put me on a statin immediately. No symptoms, no warning — just a number on a page that would have been easy to catch two years earlier.