I Wonder if There's a Metric for This

Mercy and Comfort are off on their humanitarian and goodwill missions:

Under a clear blue sky, the gleaming white ship with huge red crosses on its hull and superstructure sailed Monday on a five-month mission to bring medical care and health education to nations in the western Pacific and Southeast Asia.

The Navy hospital ship Mercy has done disaster relief and war duty, but Monday's departure marks its first deployment since its maiden voyage in 1987 on a mission that is primarily goodwill, officials said.

Capt. Joseph L. Moore, a physician who is the mission's commander, said the goal "is to let people see America in a different light."

I'm sure part of this deployment is about the readiness of the ships and their naval medical personnel, but I wonder if anyone's figured a dollar per unit of goodwill metric to see if this multi-million dollar deployment is worth it. I bet we could contract the Texas based Mercy Ships to do it for quite a bit less.