My personal encounters with doctors have been interesting at best, with more and more blood-work and tests prescribed. I refuse most and, at times, I have been threatened with early death for my unwillingness to submit to an endless swirl of appointments and experts tut-tutting some number that is too high or too low and demanding that I "come in next week" for yet another battery. It is as if my job is only there to pay doctors and nurses, my car exists to drive me between professional buildings, and any spare time be taken up in waiting rooms to get a few minute's audience with my health master. I find it amazing that such people dictate to me as if I were their employee or child! My doctor makes demands on me and I pay him quite handsomely for the privilege! No wonder the modern American doctor is often accused of having a "God complex": they seem to expect us to treat them as such!
Honestly, medicine is a business. If a doctor only treats sick people, they are missing out on a whole other market: the gold-mine of "preventive medicine". You may not be sick yet, but I will scare you with the possibilities and treat your future ills for a fee. As long as the situation remains lucrative for insurance companies and the fear-mongering keeps folks coming, it is a win for the whole medical industry. It would take a very strong person to reject the siren-song of riches from "prevention", and what doctor is in a position after years of expensive medical school and loans in the millions to resist the potential income from suggesting a blood test or two "just in case" and boosting the charge that can be made to the insurer?
As an example, I suffer from gout. I rarely go to the doctor until my annual prescription needs to be filled. I am typically asked to have a blood test done, ostensibly to check my uric acid levels, but there are always several other tests prescribed, such as cholesterol. I cannot see a medical reason to even check for uric acid, as I am either managing it or not and the level of medication (there is only two levels) either keeps off attacks or does not. The blood test indicates nothing important, except perhaps a desire to support a local lab and charge for another appointment to tell me that I indeed, once again, have incurable gout. I worry that the doctor will hold a potential refusal to take a test over my head, denying me my medication if I don't comply with their desire. It is so tempting to just get the pills offshore and never mess with my doctor again on the issue!
So perhaps Americans are practically hypochondriacs, but our doctors and the industry they serve encourages us to be so. It is just good business!