Anti-Climacus

A request for clarification on one objection to the HHS rule.

So, I mean this to be an actual question for which I hope someone will provide an answer, because it's not clear to me.

The policy, as best I understand it, to the new HHS regulation concerning contraception coverage is that insurance companies must provide a cost-neutral option to opt in; i.e. the insurance company has to find a way to pay for it, rather than making employers pay for it. The objection is, again, as best I understand it, that the costs associated with contraception will be 'priced in' to the revised premiums for all health care plans. Thus, the organizations that objected to having to pay for contraception will still have to pay for it, just not in a direct way. And this constitutes the same threat to religious freedom as forcing such organizations to pay for it explicitly and directly.

But I don't see how this objection can possibly hold water because there simply isn't a one-to-one correspondence between insurance premiums and services rendered. To use a trivial example: it used to be the case at Duke that all grad students paid the same base premium, regardless of health conditions, size of family, etc. In my first year, this meant my premium was at least 50% higher than it would have been had I gone out on my own, because I was subsidizing these higher-risk, higher-use people (like everyone else, I don't get my money back at the end of the year if I don't use my contribution's $ on health care). And, to the best of my knowledge, this is just how it works: everyone's money goes into a pot, and it's not necessarily walled off from all the other money. (Isn't this the objection to federal funding of Planned Parenthood--they can't possibly keep the federal money away from the money used for abortions?) So shouldn't it ostensibly be the case that by giving money to an insurance company at all, you are potentially funding activities you consider distasteful, or morally wrong?

This isn't to comment on the wisdom or morality of the earlier rule, or this one. Just to note that the objection seems odd.