One In 3 Men Haven’t Seen Doctor In Year

Almost 31 million American men - one in three - have not had a regular checkup in the past year and 9 million haven’t seen a doctor in five, a survey indicates.

Asked why they had not gone to the doctor, 64 percent of the men in a poll by Men’s Health magazine and CNN said it cost too much; 37 percent didn’t have the time; 36 percent felt only sick people go to doctors, and 27 percent said they didn’t trust doctors.

Most of the men (82 percent) polled their health as good to excellent, and almost half think they are in better shape than their fathers were at the same age.

Only 2 percent said they were in poor health; 15 percent described their health as fair.

Men’s foremost health concerns were heart disease (58 percent) and AIDS (55 percent), with prostate cancer (52 percent), high blood pressure (48 percent) and colon cancer (47 percent) also high on men’s list of things to watch out for.

Government research has demonstrated that women are more likely than men to go to the doctor. Sixty percent of all visits to the doctor are by women, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

In the Men’s Health-CNN poll, 65 percent of men reported they had had a physical exam in the past 12 months. Men 50 and older were more likely to go (79 percent) than those under 50 (59 percent).

Among those who hadn’t been to the doctor recently, most (52 percent) had had a checkup in the past three years. But 30 percent - the equivalent of 9 million men - had not had a physical in five or more years.

Forty-seven percent of the men said they were in better health than their fathers at the same age; 35 percent said their health was about the same; 10 percent said they were in worse condition.

The survey of 1,000 men 18 and older was released Monday as part of National Men’s Health Week and had a 3.7 percentage point margin of error.