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Scott Gottlieb takes to the pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning to assail Barack Obama for making health insurance more expensive.

As a state senator in Illinois, he voted to require that dental anesthesia be covered by every health plan for difficult medical cases. Today, the requirement is one of 43 mandates imposed by Illinois on health insurance, according to the Illinois Division of Insurance. Other mandates require coverage of infertility treatments, drug rehab, "personal injuries" incurred while intoxicated, and other forms of care.

By my count, during Mr. Obama's tenure in the state Senate, 18 different laws came up for a vote and passed that imposed new mandates on private health insurance. Mr. Obama voted for all of them.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama says people lack health insurance because "they can't afford it." He's right. But he is also partly responsible for why health insurance is too expensive. A long list of studies show that mandates like the ones Mr. Obama has championed drive up the cost of insurance for the very people priced out of coverage.

Let's leave aside, for a moment, Dr. Gottlieb's rhetorical slight-of-hand -- Obama voted for an apparently crazy mandate that is similar to other apparently crazy mandates. And he voted for 18 of the 43 mandates. But aside from  the laughing gas example -- used, apparently, because it's ... laughable -- we don't know the details of the other 17 mandates Obama supported, or how reasonable they might be. And we can't be sure that Obama supported the other mandates Gottlieb used as examples.

But look at this another way: Gottlieb is criticizing Barack Obama, essentially, for supporting the idea that health insurance should cover your health. Sure, your dental insurance should cover root canals; why in the world wouldn't it cover the anesthesia for that same root canal? Leaving anesthesia uncovered, though, might make people more reluctant or less able to get the dental surgery -- leaving people in the position of paying for dental insurance they can't afford to use. That benefits the insurance industry, but it does nothing for the guy with the aching jaw.

Here's the thing: Unfettered free-market health insurance is a crazy idea -- because, as is often pointed out elsewhere, health insurance companies can make their greatest profits (and serve their shareholders and owners best) by insuring only healthy people unlikely to get sick. Everybody could afford health insurance if nobody actually used it. Requiring health insurance companies to actually offer health coverage isn't unreasonable.