In its latest effort at clownery, the Trump administration announced that it would send a hospital boat to Greenland to provide healthcare to the population there. The precipitating incident seems to be that a U.S. seaman aboard a nuclear submarine patrolling near Greenland, needed immediate medical attention and was brought to a hospital in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital,

Trump then announced that he was working with Louisiana Governor, and czar of imperialist expansion, Jeff Landry, to send a “great hospital boat” to Greenland to “take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there.”

There are two problems with Trump’s latest plan. First, the military’s two hospital boats are both being repaired now and not able to go anywhere any time soon.

The other problem is that the people of Greenland, unlike people in the United States, already have access to free medical care. Insofar as they have conditions that cannot be treated on the island itself, they can be transported to Denmark to get some of the finest care in the world.

It is generous of Trump and Landry to offer care to Greenlanders, who don’t need it, but he might consider paying more attention to addressing the healthcare of people in the United States, and especially Louisiana, who do need help. The average life expectancy in the state of Louisiana is 72.2 years. This is slightly better than the 71.6 years in Greenland, but well below the 81.7 years in Denmark.

It hopefully is not a secret to President Trump and Governor Landry that many people in the United States struggle to pay for the care they do receive and often go without care. I suspect many people in Governor Landry’s state would be happy to hear about him working with Trump to improve the quality of care for people in Louisiana.

Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the 2016 book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Dean Baker.