memes

That's because in many other circumstances they can't. Doctors are also taught to treat the patient, not the issue. If they find something e.g. in hospital but it doesn't cause you symptoms (yet), they will likely leave it be, because in terms of QoL calculus further testing, anxiety and stress from any treatment they would do would likely exceed the actual perceived (by you) benefit.

At least that's how I understand it. It's honestly a disconnect because I think majority of people view their body more like a car and their doctors like the auto mechanics, and it is their responsibility to not only repair it when it breaks, but to maintain it to prevent it from breaking in the first place and keep it 'within normal parameters' so to speak.

However there's a vastly bigger segment of the population - the elderly (>45) - for whom this is not the case, they tend to mistrust medicine, have very little basic scientific or medical knowledge and what they do have tends to be either misinformation or severely out of date, often they lack the capacity or willingness to even understand what is told to them, they simply don't accept that huffing arsenic at work is "probably not good" for them, because they've been doing it all their life.

They will never accept that a doctor isn't an evil agent of the new world order who wants to put a microchip in them to stop them from saying slurs or beating their wife/kid, but actually is just being nice and helpful.

So they don't bother.