An Army of Normal Folks - Dr. Scott Morris: Serving 80,000 Underinsured Americans (Pt 2)

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Scott is the founder of Church Health, the largest faith-based privately funded health clinic in the country. Over 1,000 doctors volunteer to serve 80,000 underinsured patients in Memphis!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an Army of Normal folks and we continue now with part two of our conversation with Dr. Scott Morris right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. The big take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world? Western nations like the U.S. and Europe. Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China.

And help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time. But the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could to get a drug on the market as fast as they could. I'm David Guret. I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Emosin.

We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. As someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse. I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's take a moment to breathe. Deep inhale.

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the Ed Council. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. And guess what? So are we. Just in case you forgot, I'm Tori Deal. I'm a six time finalist and a challenge champion. And I'm Anissa Ferrer and I've been gracing your screens for the last two decades. I am a veteran challenger and challenge all-star.

And speaking of all-stars, All-Stars 4 is finally here. I'm gonna be honest. I literally thought this day was never going to come. Well, the Challenge Gods have answered our prayers and we're going to be right here along with you fans covering every episode on the podcast. And this season takes it to a whole new level. Old school legends, modern power players,

redemption seekers, and ex-lovers are all competing in Cape Town, South Africa for the prize of $300,000. Anyone can win, relationships matter, and only one all-star will claim the title of challenge champion. Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sears has built 10 of these buildings around the country.

They all have the same architect. They all pretty much look alike. Two had been same architect. They all pretty much look alike. Two had been torn down, but at this point, six had been repurposed already. So, Seattle, Minneapolis, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta. The building in Atlanta is the world's largest brick building. The one in Seattle is the home office of Starbucks. It's a million square feet of coffee. Wow.

But then the one in Minneapolis was the most like what we were talking about doing. So, in my opinion, how we crossed the Rubicon to get the building renovated is I got three of my wealthy friends to give me their planes for a day. And I took the mayor of Memphis, the CEO of St. Jude, of Methodist Hospital, you know, about however many three planes can carry, and we went to Minneapolis to see the building that had been repurposed there. Which is very similar to this one. It looks very much like it.

And then the way they were using it was similar to what we had come to envision could happen here. And after seeing that, everybody came back going, we could do this. There was only one thing we needed we didn't have. Money. $300 million. Is that all? That was all.

That was all. You know, it took three and a half years, but over time, we found the money. Currently 52 entities have signed long-term leases to be in the building. There are 265 apartments. Every last one is rented. Church Health is the anchor tenant. We have 150,000 square feet. That's what I wanted to say. And so when it opened, Church Health was the anchor tenant. So you move from one old house and 12 patients to eight houses and 30,000 patients to now you can scale. And you have how many

square? 150,000 square feet. Which is world class. I've been in them. Listen, don't think because this is a church health center serving the working poor and the working uninsured that don't think the clinic that you see on TV somewhere, this place is nice and the people pay their 40 bucks and there's a huge doctor's office, but you also have physical therapy. Don't you have the largest dentist something? Right. So we have 52 medical exam rooms, but we- 52. dentist something? Right. So we have 52 medical exam rooms, but we've...

52. Right. But on the dental side, dentistry is an economic issue. You can't go from a minimum wage job to a better job if your teeth are all messed up. It's not going to happen. You don't look good in an interview. Right. So I see this guy who has a dental problem.

He goes to the dentist, he can't afford the dentist. So he took measures into his own hands and he superglued his teeth together. Are you kidding me? What he didn't understand is that superglue will eat away all the enamel in your mouth. So by the time I saw him, his mouth was a total disaster. You know, this is America. When did it get to be that I'm working? I'm taking care of my family. You have dental pain, one of the worst pains you could have and your only option is to super glue your mouth? We consider that to be immoral. That's something we ought to care deeply about.

And by we, I mean the church and the faith community. But has anybody listening ever heard a sermon on dental care? I don't think so. I don't think so, no. But to show you that we have taken it seriously, we have built the largest free-standing dental clinic in America. And it's 100% focused on the working uninsured. Here.

Here, right here. And you also have physical therapy. Physical therapy, and our newest venture here has to do with eye care. When we first came to Crosstown Concourse, that's what we call our building now, we built an eye clinic in partnership with the Southern College of Optometry. Right here in Memphis. Right here in Memphis. There are 164 allopathic medical schools in America.

There are only 11 optometry schools. And one of the best is here in Memphis. So that clinic focuses on making glasses, doing preventive type work. But unfortunately, if you're poor and you're having a heart attack and you go to the emergency room, you will having a heart attack and you go to the emergency room, you will get a bypass operation. But if you're poor and you're going blind and you go to that same ER, nobody gives a flip.

And the reason is you're not going to die from going blind, but emergency rooms are not required to have to treat you. If you're going to die, yes, they have to treat you from a heart attack. But if you're going blind, they will give you the name of an ophthalmologist that you can go make an appointment with. That you can't afford. That a poor person could never afford. So we are now finishing an eye clinic that will focus on the four leading causes

of blindness, which are diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, glaucoma, and cataracts. And I mean, from our perspective, you know, from a biblical standpoint, what could be more in line with what a Christian faith is all about than you take poor people who are blind and you give them their sight back. It's phenomenal. Another thing you have going back piggybacking to something you said earlier, which I was really surprised as you have a massive area that is all these kitchenettes. Right.

So your mother told you you are what you eat. She was right. But unfortunately, in today's world, it is very difficult to get people to focus on their health and how it relates to food. But we need to all realize that food is medicine. And so, we are one of the major proponents of something called culinary medicine, effectively using food as a way to help people live a healthier life. So we do three things in our teaching kitchen.

One is we train young doctors how to talk to patients about food. That's amazing to me. It's amazing if you are a physician because doctors don't know squat about nutrition. They have no idea how to actually talk to patients about food. And the way we go about doing it is we get them in our kitchen and we turn them into chefs. And they love it. And it becomes a much more engaging way. And it's far more effective than just giving somebody a diet sheet and say, you know, go eat this food.

Once again, everybody, do not envision the back of a restaurant with a bunch of stainless steel stuff and no windows. This quote, teaching kitchen that we're talking about is this massive open area with kitchen areas set up and all of the things you need to cook. But it's like eight or four or five, I don't know how many kitchens kind of in this big open area where people are gathering and it's very open and airy and I can see you having this nutritious cooking classes in here. Well, another example of what happens in the teaching kitchen is at Crosstown, we actually have a high school in our building.

Yeah, there's... Yeah, that's right. But you're the core tenant, you said 52 others, I was gonna say one of them is actually a high schooler. And in the high school, we teach ninth grade biology in our kitchen through food. No kidding. So kids learn about biology through food

and at the same time, they're learning themselves how to eat healthy foods. That is just unbelievable. Okay. I bet you wish your high school had done that. Yeah. I eat like chicken fingers every day, which was you are what you eat. I look like a chicken finger now probably because of that experience. You also built a road through the building so that people didn't have to walk far? What was that? So when we moved here, I was very anxious about, even though it was very inefficient when we had 13 buildings, it was very convenient for patients that they could park literally

right next to the building and get out and come in. And if you broke your leg, you know, it wasn't a difficult thing to do. And in our new building, we have a big parking garage, and I was not sure how that would go over. So in talking to the architects about that, their answer was, hey, not a problem. We will build a road to the middle of the building. And so that's exactly what's happened. There is a, you know, people don't really realize why this road is there, but it's there so our patients can be dropped off and it's 15 feet into our waiting room. It's just phenomenal. And now you've gone to, oh, hold it.

Let's talk about behavioral health too. If we're going through the things that matter. Yeah, do behavioral health. So, you know, as I've mentioned before, 50% of people who come to primary care doctors have no medical problem. You know, they come to the doctor for reasons they used to come to priests. So in the walk-in clinic, not that long ago, I see a 42-year-old woman who's Latino, she's undocumented, she's cleaning houses in an affluent suburb in Memphis. The owners of the home are not there, but the other workers are there and they rape her.

Now, she doesn't call the police because she's undocumented, scared to death. Unfortunately, she does talk to the pastor of her church who tells her that she needs to keep working in that home because she needs to quote unquote confront her demons. That was not good advice. I see her six weeks later because she has pain in her pelvis. I do her pelvic exam, it's totally normal because that's not the problem, right? The problem is they have totally crushed her heart. And my giving her an extra 15 minutes of my great wisdom,

that's not going to help anything. Instead, I was able to call in one of our Spanish-speaking counselors who is embedded in what we do, who was able to spend an hour with her in the exam room. She didn't have to make an appointment, go somewhere else. She could get seen right there while I kept moving, doing what a doctor's better able to do. And I'm not gonna sit here and tell you

that we have fixed her, we have not fixed her, but at least she's been seen in follow-up in our behavioral health center, and we're on the right path. We'll be right back. The big take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and best informed business reporters

around the world. Western nations like the U.S. and Europe. Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China. And help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time, but the longer this drags on, the more worry he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could to get a drug on the market as fast as they could. I'm David Durat. I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Amosin.

We cover the stories behind what's moving money and markets. Basically everyone was expecting, if not a coamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. As someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse. I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Ariel. I moved to the US at 19. I spoke no English and I struggled finding job opportunities. Everything I have I owe to the Adult

Literacy Center and getting my high school diploma at age 22. It was an honor helping you achieve your greatness. Now you're helping others achieve theirs. It Hello, from Wondermedia Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, host of Womanica, a daily podcast that introduces you to the fascinating lives of women history has forgotten. This month, we're bringing you the stories of disappearing acts. There's the 17th century fraudster who convinced men she was a German princess, the 1950s folk singer who literally drove off into the sunset and was never heard from again, the Firsts folk singer who literally drove off into the sunset and was never heard from again, the First Nations activist whose kidnapping and murder ignited decades of discourse about indigenous women's disappearances,

and the young daughter of a Russian czar whose legendary escape led to even more intrigue and speculation. These stories make us consider what it means to disappear and why a woman might even want to make herself scarce. Listen to a manica on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think you moved to YMCAN right next to your...what is that all about? So we used to have our own wellness facility. So what this is all about is ultimately

something we call the model for healthy living. So being healthy is not about the absence of disease. The World Health Organization would agree with that. Who cares if you live two years longer, if it means two years longer in a nursing home? Life for life's sake can't possibly be the point but breathing in breathing out none of us are signing up for that. So what we think being healthy is about is ultimately three things. Having more joy in your life, having more love in your life, and

being driven closer to things greater than we are. Now we would call that God you don't have to call that God but for all of us there are things greater than we are we need to be drawn closer to. But if that's what it takes to be healthy, more joy, more love, being driven closer to God, it doesn't have a lot to do with the doctor, does it? Which led us to create something we call the model for healthy living. So we will argue there are seven things in life that are equally important that must be in balance if you're going to be healthy. One of them is medical care but only one. Our country is currently

spending a trillion dollars a year on the doctor, hospital, and drugs but it only has 10% to do with your health outcomes. 10%. I think we should argue we're not spending the money very wisely. But it is one. The second is nutrition. We've already talked about that. The third is movement.

Our bodies were made to move. I'll come back to talk about that in a minute. Next is emotions, family and friends, work. We define work as those things that bring meaning to your life and lastly your faith life. All seven things are equally important. No one is more important than the other, but everything we do is driven by that concept. Now before we moved across town, we used to run our own wellness facility. We had a gym, we had whatever. When we came to Crosstown, what we now have is

25,000 square feet of church health space we've contracted with the Y to manage. So, it's Church Health YMCA. The beauty of it is, is once our patients are members of Church Health Y, they're members of any Y. It allows our physical therapists to bleed over into the Y. It's just a better way of doing this. Okay. So, if all of this is not enough, you've also come up with a a quote, health insurance plan. This one folks will floor you.

Go for it, Scott. Well, so we began in 1987. We grew fairly quickly in terms of a need for seeing patients. And so I hired a partner. She was fantastic. We grew to practice. Then she had something that I can't stand, a husband. They get in the way, don't they?

Well, her husband took her to Virginia. And literally overnight, I was having to see 60 patients a day, which is not tenable. So one day in the shower, I have a vision. And my vision was that I would go to the Memphis Medical Society, get them to volunteer as physicians to see our patients in their own office. They wouldn't come to church health. The patients would go to their office. The doctor would donate whatever they did. And then every laboratory, every diagnostic center would also donate

their services. We would have subspecialists willing to care for patients, and then the hospitals would donate their care. And then the way a person would get in Enrolled in the program is through their employer The cost would be $50 the employer would pay $10 a month you couldn't put the whole thing on your employee But then it would come the payment would come through payroll deduction So in 1990 I was ready to roll this thing out. Everything was looking good, and then I get a call from the Department of Insurance in

Nashville who told me that they had heard about it. It was a really good idea. There was only one problem. It was illegal. It sounded like health insurance, and we didn't meet the rules to be an insurance company. So in my opinion, if something is illegal, but it's still the right thing, there is only one rational thing to do, which is... talking about Do it?

Change the law. Change the law. So we ended up passing what's known as the Memphis Plan Act of 1991. You literally changed the state law. Yes, and we've amended it three times. So you lobbied state senators and legislature. It was a horrible experience. I bet it was.

And so it's called what? The Memphis Plan Act of 1991. It's a law. It's a law. And all this law says is anything that looks like what I just described to you in the state of Tennessee is not health insurance. That's all the law says. But it means that we are no longer subject to the regulation of the Department of Insurance.

So we've been able to do this since 1991. So what does it actually mean? Well, what it means is we've managed to create managed care for the uninsured, which most people would tell you it's not possible. And then where does the money go? We don't pay anybody a dime. The moment I pay any doctor, any hospital a penny, the whole thing falls apart. From soup to nuts, everything is donated. But there's not a problem somebody could have

from the cradle to the grave. You need a bypass operation, it will cost you $5 and that's it. No deductible, no co-payment. That's better health insurance than any one of us have, only it is actually not health insurance. But it will provide the best quality of care you can imagine. Pete And it costs. Dr. Bates And then so the money all goes to support the overall work of church health. Pete And it's 50 bucks a month. Dr. Bates 50 bucks a month.

Pete So when we're sitting here talking about health insurance, not health insurance, and how you have your more laborious positions in your company that make 1250 or 13 or $14 an hour, and them having to decide between clothing their kids and feeding them or having a hundred and eighty dollars a week pulled out of their their check for family health coverage through Blue Cross Blue Shield that they can't afford right they can sign up for this plan and as long as employer pays ten bucks right that's right and they pay 40 bucks we're not looking to enroll a company that has a hundred employees if you have a hundred employees you should provide health insurance employees. If you have 100 employees, you should provide

health insurance. But if you have a housekeeper, you've got somebody cutting your grass, you're a mom and pop business that has two employees. With restaurants, we're not looking to enroll waiters and waitresses. We're looking to enroll the people who wash the dishes or who clean up. Like you said at the beginning, the people who make our food and cut our grass and make the beds at the hotels. And I talk about, I always say, and who will one day dig your grave? All of the cemeteries in Memphis have people on the Memphis plan.

No kidding. Yeah. And it's called the Memphis plan. Yeah. It stands for the minimum wage employees of Memphis plan for health services. I'm the only one who I think knows that but... And it's all because of the church health center, which is now Churchell. Yeah, right. We just dropped the word center when we moved across town. Why couldn't this be scaled in every city in the world? Well, actually, so the need is absolutely there. I know y'all are tired of me talking about Descartes, but the reason is because people

just can't get their heads around it. But we have a...there are 90 clinics around the country that are modeled after what we do. I have a book that came out just over a year ago called Care, How People of Faith Can Respond to Our Broken Health System that talks about a number of these clinics. But there are actually 1,400 free and charitable clinics around the country, many of which use us as a model. Are any this size? No, they're not our size.

But the point is, is that this is needed everywhere. And if you look around in your community, there is something similar there that just nobody knows about. It's not talked about. And the government is the most

frustrating thing I've ever been around. I have a book, a friend named Jim Wallace who started something called Sojourners who's written a lot. And you don't have to read his book to understand the point. He wrote a book called God's Politics, how the right doesn't get it and the left doesn't care. And I can, that's been my experience. I just can't, you know, Washington's the meanest place I've ever been. If I never go there again, I'll be perfectly happy.

Scott, when you wake up and look in the mirror, and you realize that you came to Memphis not knowing anybody, and you got your first funding for a faith-based health center from a Jewish foundation that is now the anchor for a revitalization product of an entire area of Memphis and the anchor with 150,000 square foot space, soup to nuts in health, serving 80,000 people. I mean, do you pinch yourself a little? nuts and health serving 80,000 people. I mean, do you pinch yourself a little? I know you're a humble guy, but my goodness, Scott. Well, you know, I love what I do. It feeds my soul and, um, it's just the moving forward. Uh,

what I feel like I have an obligation right now is to, to use the platform that we've created to move on to doing good. Right now the thing I'm obsessed about is Memphis is a black city. What Memphis has almost none of? Black doctors. So what I am convinced of is that there are young African American kids who have the capacity to be doctors.

But why does it not happen? It doesn't happen for what I refer to as leakage. They've never seen anybody that looks like them. I was going to say a lot of it is access and access looks like you know people who are doctors. Yeah. So, we are now on a path to be able to identify kids like that, get them to college. We run a gap year program, finish college, want to go to medical school, work for us for a year, get the medical school and then bring that kid back to want to care for the

neighborhood they grew up in. There are many, many moving parts to that, but I'm convinced that we're going to be successful at doing this. And this is all a response to where I think church health has the ability to do more than just provide healthcare for people. These issues are transformative. And I believe that the church, you know, has fallen into a terrible path right now. The pandemic has made many, many churches just obsessed over paying their light bill without realizing we've actually been given an enormous opportunity to be what God's called us to be. I believe that the work of Church Health really is the church at work and how we engage people

here at Crosstown is an example of that. We think of Crosstown as a vertical urban village built around health, education, and the arts. And I see this as how the church should be moving forward. You know, it can't just be trying to put butts in the pews on Sunday morning. That doesn't change people's lives. It's just phenomenal. We'll be right back. The big take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with

the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world. Western nations like the US and Europe. Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China. And help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time. But the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could to get a drug on the

market as fast as they could. I'm David Duret. I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Amosin. We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically, everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. Someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse.

I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello. hard radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, host of Womanica, a daily podcast that introduces you to the fascinating lives of women history has forgotten. This month, we're bringing you the stories of disappearing acts. There's the 17th century fraudster who convinced men she was a German princess. The 1950s folk singer who literally drove off into the sunset and was never heard from again.

The First Nations activist whose kidnapping and murder ignited decades of discourse about indigenous women's disappearances. And the young daughter of a Russian Tsar whose legendary escape led to even more intrigue and speculation. These stories make us consider what it means to disappear, and why a woman might even want to make herself scarce. Listen to what Manika on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. MTV's official Challenge podcast is back for another season.

And guess what? So are we. Just in case you forgot, I'm Tori Deal. I'm a six-time finalist and a Challenge champion. And I'm Anissa Ferrer and I've been gracing your screens for the last two decades. I am a veteran challenger and Challenge All-Star. And speaking of All-Stars, All-Stars 4 is finally here. I'm gonna be honest.

I literally thought this day was never going to come. Well, the Challenge Gods have answered our prayers and we're going to be right here along with you fans covering every episode on the podcast. And this season takes it to a whole new level. Old school legends, modern power players, redemption seekers, and ex-lovers are all competing in Cape Town, South Africa

for the prize of $300,000. Anyone can win Relationships Matter and only one all star will claim the title of challenge champion. Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So in the middle of running this thing, which I imagine you spend an enormous amount of time with your philanthropic heart on trying to raise money, you still practice every day. Yeah, I'm a real doctor. I see patients every morning and I mostly see people through our walk-in clinic where

they're sick today and don't have health insurance. And I love the variety of it. That's for the beauty of the intellectual challenge is I literally don't know what's behind the next door. You know, it could be a cold or a sore throat, but it could also be a broken bone or somebody dying from cancer. And then the intellectual challenge to figure out

what are we gonna do now. So that feeds me in many ways, but then it's also the opportunity to get to know people and it's heartbreaking to see how people struggle. And even though we've been here for 37 years, people and you know it's heartbreaking to see how people struggle and even though we've been here for 37 years people oftentimes have been out there for quite a while until they find us. You know somebody breaks their leg, the emergency room has an obligation to tell you that your leg is broken and put you

in a splint. They do not have an obligation to do anything more than that. So almost every day we see people who, I see people who, they broke their leg not today or yesterday but two weeks ago and then they didn't know about us and they find their way to us. And so if I can't set their bone myself, then we have the ability to have the best orthopedic surgeons in Memphis take care of them. But the same thing will be true if that person now has cancer or some other terrible problem. I guess it helps you not only keep your finger on the nuts and bolts of what's going on a daily basis by just being engaged on a daily basis as a doc.

But I also got to believe that the stories that you see daily also help continue to fuel that fire to make this thing work. I mean, look, we have to raise $27 million a year, year after year after year. So being able to tell patients about somebody I saw this morning, it both makes the ask fresh, but it also is what drives me to keep doing it. Because I know if I can't raise that money, then they're not gonna get cared for. So I'm not quitting. Darrell Bock Yeah.

So everybody that hears that, $27 million a year, if anybody's got a checkbook laying around, I'm sure Scott would love to hear from you. We have a national audience and I can't imagine somebody's out there with a medical background thinking, holy moly, I want to know something about this. How do they found out more? Where do they go? What are the resources? And if somebody wants to reach you through email or website or something to ask questions of you, how does that work? Dr. Ritchie Pfeiffer The easiest is just our website, which is

churchhealth.org. And then, yeah, there's plenty of ways to contact me. My email is morriss, last name, first initial, two R's, two S's, at churchhealth.org. It's easy. I'll get back to you. Or come to Memphis, I mean, again, we have a replication seminar, we just had one last week where people come from all over the country, we do this a couple of times a year.

If you really were seriously interested, it's a three day experience, you get all of my best people trying to help, you know, telling you the things that I wish somebody had told me back in in 1987. For example, if you order a blood pressure cuff out of a catalog, do you know what you'll get? No. You'll get a blood pressure cuff. Okay, that makes sense. Do you know what you won't get? What?

You won't get the bladder you need to blow it up. You won't get that. So, my point is that these little simple practical things are what we try to talk to people about. And then we talk seriously about the fact that we're a true faith-based organization and we're not a federally qualified health center. And why, that's why we do that. I mean, you know, the government has a role, no question about it, but I get very frustrated when people think it is only the government that should be caring for the poor. That is not right.

If it's the only government caring for anything, we have a problem. That's true. But this is again, the challenge that people don't see that in my community, I can make a difference. And issues around healthcare get very big, very fast, and then people just put it at arm's length and say, I can't make a difference. Well, you actually can make a difference, especially when you drop back and look at what I was defining as what healthcare is.

It's not just about giving people pills. As far as the pills are concerned, you gotta realize all pills are poisons. That is how they work. They poison your body to prevent it from doing something it is naturally trying to do. Now, mind you, I am a statin prescribing doctor, but thank God the pills don't actually work very well.

If they did everything they tell you they do on TV, we'd be killing people right and left, which we actually already do. So, I mean, nobody can give somebody 10 pills and know all that the interactions are going to be. You know, so you got to be pretty doggone smart to override the body the way God created it. So we have to find ways to engage people around health beyond just thinking that chemistry will solve the problem. It won't. What a phenomenal story. When you look down at that guy's pamphlet in Yale, did you ever think, did you ever really fathom or dream that it would lead to the renaissance of a building and 150,000 square foot clinic?

Did you ever think it could be that, Scott? Scott McLaughlin I didn't think it would. I wasn't thinking about a building. But again, I take the gospel seriously. But why I think what we do can work in every community is because I think what the New Testament calls us to do is what God wants of us. And if we're not doing it, then you're not going to be able to be connected to that thing that touches our heart the most.

Just from a strictly Christian perspective, you don't grow the church through more bad Christian rock music. That's not what grows the church. What grows the church is by doing those things that God calls us to do. I mean, like, how did the church go from at the end of the New Testament, there's only a handful of Christians, right? Yeah. And then by the beginning of the fourth century, Constantine sees the writing on the wall because there are millions of Christians in Rome. How did that happen?

Now, most preachers will tell you it had to be because of good preaching. Good preaching had nothing to do with it. In the second and third century, there were plagues all over the Roman world. And when people got sick, it was only the Christians who were willing to take care of them. And when people got better, they asked the question, who is your God that I might worship him? That's what grew the church. And I think in our own plague in today's world, when you think about it, there's a lot of parallel here. How is it that we are not realizing

that there's so much powerful things that can happen in our own lives if we were to follow down the same path. You know, caring for our bodies, engaging the spirit, you know, not being so connected to technology. This is how we can in our own lives, find those things that make our life meaningful Man if you guys are not sitting here listening this and soaking up the wisdom behind What dr. Scott Morris just said to you you're missing the entire idea behind church health and Like he said at the beginning this can fix so much more than just a headache or a broken leg

It can fix our souls and collectively can fix our souls more than just a headache or a broken leg. It can fix our souls and collectively it can fix our souls. And one other thing I want to emphasize you said, I have said on this show and I've remained saying it, I will say it forever. I do not care what you look like. I do not care how you vote. I do not care who you worship. I don't care who you love. I do not care who you worship. I don't care who you love. If you're doing something in your neck of the woods to serve somebody who is not as advantaged or as well off as you, I can celebrate you. It is the one thing that breaks down all politics and belief sets and everything is I don't care who you are, who you love, how you worship, what you look like. If you're serving someone who's not as blessed as you

in your community, that is something that I can celebrate. And if I'm doing the same, that's something you can celebrate about me. And from that foundation, we can grow common respect, we can grow an understanding and hopefully erase so much of this narrative that divides us. I believe that with everything I am. And to hear you say that this massive success that is church health was first funded by a Jewish foundation and is now worked in by doctors giving of their time that are Christian but also Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu. Does that not speak to the healing of our collective social soul. It does.

And there's so much more to do. One thing we haven't talked about that you and I have talked about is these days, 50% of our patients speak Spanish. And the issue of immigration, I don't know how we got there. People think that immigrants in America, especially coming from the southern border, have only been here for like two weeks. They have been here a lot longer than two weeks. The average amount of time that a Spanish speaking immigrant has been in America is

15 years. And again, you and I have talked about this. They pay taxes. Social security. You gave me this insight about how they pay social security, and the Social Security Administration realizes they'll never have to pay that money out. They pay into a system that they can never benefit from. They prop the system up, I would argue.

And you could not be more right. I've thought a lot about it here since you first talked to me about that. But if somebody is building our house in our suburbs, and they fall off the roof and break their leg, we have an obligation to take care of them. In my mind, no vifans or buts are about it. If I have to look God in the face at the end of time and he asked me or she asked me, what did you do in that situation? I want to say I did the best I could. I believe if Martin Luther King were alive today, this is the issue that he would be

marching in the streets over. This is the civil rights issue in today's world. And we don't seem to see it. I want to say something about that real quick as we close right before we close it. The border needs to be sound. We can't be letting, anybody wants to come across the border, across the border. We have to know who's among our ranks. We have to understand what's going

on in our country, who's in our country. And the fact is, the hard truth is there are people who want to do our society and civilization ill. And if you want proof, just remember 9-11. And you have to have checks and balances. You have to have law and order. You have to have a border. So this is not about that. This is about what Scott just talked about. The average length of time for a Spanish speaking immigrant in our country is 16 years, not

six months. And if you go out to dinner in the next week, one of those people will have played a part in preparing your meal. If you go in a building anytime in the next day, if you're not living in a tent, one of those people played a part in constructing the building that you live in. There is not a place in our society that hardworking immigrants have not served you. And to ignore that fact and act as if we don't have a moral obligation to figure this out in a better way is frankly just stupid. Yes, we have to have secure borders.

Yes, we have to have new house in our country. But it shouldn't take a person who wants to better their life 11 years to be able to get a green card. We have a very broken system. And for most of us, that is a governmental problem. But where it becomes our problem is when we turn a blind eye to it and we don't accept that there are human beings with souls amongst us every day, feeding us, building stuff for us, doing everything we need done in society. And we do have a moral obligation to care for them.

Well said. And Church Health does that. We do our best. And we're going to do it tomorrow too. And I'm going to root for you tomorrow. Scott Morse, amazing story, phenomenal story and amazing things you're doing. And I'm gonna do something I don't often do. I'm gonna let you have the last word, which is you're getting to enjoy a podcast in Crosstown Concourse, the opposite end of where Church Health is and the Memphis Listening Lab. What do you know about this? Do you know much about this thing?

Jon Moffitts Yeah, I do. I mean, the Listening Lab is, I forget the number of vinyl records here, 10,000 at least, you know, from a private collector. And you can just come in here at any point and listen to whatever you want to hear, and it's a beautiful space and then- It's groovy. What is it about 2,000, 3,000 square feet? This is not a small place.

No. Yeah. And once again, this wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the Crosstown Concourse, which wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Church Hill, which your legacy has a little stamp on the very place we're having this conversation today, my friend. I love the fact that you all record here. It's fantastic.

It is very cool. Scott, thank you so much for sharing your story. Thanks for so much that you do for our city. And thank you so much for what you've done for so many hardworking people across our county that don't have insurance and the belief set that it's not just about setting broken fingers and prescribing pills, but it's also about reaching the soul. Scott Morris, you are a great man

and I really thank you for joining us. My honor. And thank you for joining us this week. If Scott Morris or other guests have inspired you in general, or better yet, inspired you to take action by donating to Church Health, starting something like it in your area, volunteering in an existing one, or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at bill at normal folks dot us. If you enjoy this episode, I'm begging you share it with friends and on social subscribe to the podcast rate and review it. Remember at NormalFolks.us, do any and all of these things that will help us grow. An army of Normal Folks.

The more of you, the more impact we can have. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week. The Big Take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world. We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets and help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters every afternoon. I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Emosen.

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