Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

Isn’t at least the section about false positives an indication that doctors know what they’re doing, and know what they cannot do?

> Why did the author not present the institutional position or data supporting yearly checkups and why it's misleading?

Because it’s not a scientific article? The article mentions the arguments and has links to a paper in the BMJ (paywalled, unfortunately)

> We are not experts, we should leave decision making to people who know what they don't know rather than to people who don't know what they don't know (us).

So, why do you want this article to show data supporting its claims?

Money gets to vote on candidates before people do. Before any general election there is a primary, and to win the primary you do fundraising. People with money give politicians money with the implicit understanding that making anti-donor decisions will result in withdrawal of future money or (thanks to citizens united) unlimited contributions to their opponent.

Money literally votes on political candidates before any person does. That is why we have a "democracy" more responsive to money than to the will of the average voter.

Even if you look at it as a black box, Princeton did a study and asked if the legislation our politicians pass correlate most with the average citizen, interest groups, or the desires of rich people, the correlation was highest with rich people: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

  Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized 
  groups representing business interests have substantial independent 
  impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and 
  mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

As wealth concentrates, it is able to purchase and corrupt further institutions. Bezos bought WaPo, Musk bought Twitter, I'm sure there are more examples. Do you think that is a form of power that is able to manipulate public opinion or government policy? Do you think ownership of a media outlet could help a person concentrate their wealth or fight being taxed?

Even from a mathematical approach. If Billionaires are able to earn 5% year over year interest at minimal risk, while large swathes of people will never make enough to have a savings, what do you think the long term consequences of that will be? If inequality is increasing and never decreasing, what do you think the long term effects will be? What types of things cause inequality to decrease, are we doing those things?

How much wealth has to concentrate before you are comfortable labeling it oligarchy?

Here is Yale history professor and expert in European history Timothy Snyder talking about oligarchy, the rule of the wealthy few. "What is oligarchy?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biZVrh821RA

In this video he explores what oligarchy is and what effect oligarchy (the state of extreme wealth inequality -- too many billionaires) has on social programs like healthcare, namely that there won't be social programs/investment in institutions.

I would just stop there. For over 10,000 years we've had two systems: one where a small group of very rich people control society and admit it, and one where they don't. The former was arguably better, at least it was honest.

It doesn't have to that doctors are bad at their jobs, but rather that they're humans, and humans are hardwired to try to make other humans happy, and patients like being actively given treatment as opposed to "have you considered sleeping well, eating well, and just letting your body do its thing?"

The sources that the article has, an article in the BMJ[0] and Cochrane[1], are actually targeted at primary care physicians (after all, random laypeople don't read medical journals!), to basically tell them to chill, and tell their patients to just let themselves be.

[0] https://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g3680 [1] https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-are-general-he...