May 7, 2001: Gesundheit! - Dr. Patch Adams

Art Bell welcomes Dr. Patch Adams, the physician and social activist whose life inspired the Robin Williams film, for a wide-ranging conversation about health care, compassion, and American society. Adams, founder of the Gesundheit Institute, describes his 30-year mission to provide free medical care and his plan to build a full-scale hospital in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, where doctors and nurses would work for $3,000 a year.

Adams shares his personal history, from growing up on army bases as a military child to voluntary psychiatric hospitalization at age 17 after struggling with racism, his father's death, and suicidal thoughts. He criticizes managed care as entirely negative, argues that malpractice insurance breeds fear and mistrust between doctors and patients, and notes that despite decades of practicing medicine without insurance, he was never sued.

The conversation covers forced psychiatric incarceration, the case of Rodney Yoder held involuntarily for a decade in Illinois, and Adams's belief that 95 percent of Christians fail to live Christ's message of service. He challenges listeners to support his hospital project and confronts what he sees as a society that worships money and power at the expense of genuine human connection.