Patch Adams doesn’t look like a doctor—he looks like a clown. He wears clown clothes, and has a mustache that curls out from his face. When he rides his unicycle and juggles, it’s hard to picture him taking care of patients. But Adams is a hard-working doctor who is so concerned about the runaway costs of health care that he refuses to accept money from his patients.

When poor people get sick, they often can’t afford medical care so they don’t go to a doctor, or they do go to a doctor and then worry so much about how to pay the bill that they can get even sicker. Adams believes that worry is bad for people and that everyone should be able to go to a doctor when they need to. That’s why he ran a free medical clinic in Arlington, Virginia, for 12 years.

Has anybody ever said Gesundheit to you when you sneeze? The German word Gesundheit means “good health.” Adams called his free clinic the “Gesundheit Institute” because of its meaning and because the name made people laugh—he believes laughter is good for people’s well-being.

Adams and another Gesundheit physician moonlighted in hospital emergency rooms and donated their salaries to keep the free clinic operating. People were so amazed that these doctors were doing this that many volunteered to help them run the clinic. During the dozen years it existed, the Gesundheit Institute took care of 15,000 patients, all gratis.

Now Patch Adams is building a new dream. The Gesundheit Center is in the hills of West Virginia and will have a complete hospital, houses and gardens, craft and exercise rooms. And it will all be free.

To pay the costs of building the new Center, Adams puts on his clown outfits and does a “Medicine Show,” teaching people how to maintain their health. He performs all over the country and around the world in medical schools, hospitals, and anywhere people gather to learn. Since a movie was made about him, more people invite him to come and speak, and they add money to the funds that will complete the new hospital.

What Adams is doing is not always popular with other doctors. Some are embarrassed because he’s “undignified.” A few want to make as much money as possible, so when Adams says money isn’t important, they find him irritating.

“We’re giving away the most costly thing in America,” Patch Adams says. “We’re a pie in the face of greed.”