“Study after study shows that employers pay in wages whatever they don’t pay in health insurance premiums. Most recently, a study of Massachusetts’ health reform found that firms offering health insurance pay wages lower by an average of $6,058 (nearly exactly the cost of annual health insurance premiums). Each employee’s actual “salary” is wages plus the employer share of the health insurance premium. So, when a corporation purchases a health insurance plan that its employees (and their family members) may or may not use to buy contraception, it is no more paying for contraception than it does when employees use their wages to buy it.”
Sepper continues the discussion on the Harvard Law Bill of Health blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/billofhealth/2013/01/02/who-pays-the-wage-insurance-trade-off-and-corporate-religious-freedom-claims/