Author

Tom Dean

Tom Dean

Tom Dean is a retired family physician who grew up on a farm west of Wessington Springs. He graduated from Wessington Springs High School, Carleton College in Minnesota and medical school in Rochester, New York. He completed a family medicine residency at the University of Washington in Seattle. He returned to Wessington Springs to practice in 1978 along with his wife, Kathy, a certified nurse midwife. He retired after 43 years of practice and still lives in Wessington Springs.

COMMENTARY
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Regulatory limits needed to prevent price gouging and ensure availability of medicines

By: - April 5, 2023

High costs and shortages of pharmaceuticals are serious, ongoing issues. Drug prices in the U.S. are among the highest in the world. A recent survey by the Rand Corporation looked at drug prices in 32 developed countries. U.S. prices were the highest in the group and were more than twice the average of prices in […]

COMMENTARY
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Treating health care as a commodity has not driven costs lower

By: - January 29, 2023

Assuring effective health care to a population is a challenge for every society. As care options become more complex — and expensive — the challenges increase. In the U.S. both the organization and the financing of health care are perennial issues in public discussions, political campaigns and among social policy researchers. Basically there are two […]