A state law that soon will require commercially available health insurance plans to cover prescription contraceptives has several religious employers scrambling to change their coverage for moral reasons.

St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison and the Madison Catholic Diocese are among employers who say they will switch from commercial health plans to being self-insured so their premiums do not help fund an insurance benefit they oppose on religious grounds. Self-insured policies are exempt from the mandate.

“It looks like this will probably end up costing us (more money), but it is worth it if we can avoid cooperation with sin,” said Brent King, a spokesman for the Madison diocese.

Twenty-six other states also require coverage of prescription birth control, although 15 of them exempt some religious employers, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a national nonprofit organization focused on sexual and reproductive health. Wisconsin has no religious exemption.

The law, approved by legislators this summer as part of the state budget, requires all commercial insurance policies with a prescription drug benefit to cover prescription contraceptives. The law kicks in Jan. 1, although employers can honor their current insurance contracts until they expire.

Supporters say birth control is part of basic health care and that excluding it discriminates against women. Opponents see the mandate as insensitive to their morals and legal rights and say it was inappropriately stuck in the budget at the last minute to minimize debate.

It is unclear how much upheaval in the insurance market it will cause. For starters, the mandate affects only the 30 percent or so of the state population covered by commercial health plans, said Phil Dougherty of the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans.

Self-insured plans cover about 40 percent of the population, he said. The rest are either uninsured or covered by public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The latter is for low-income people and already covers prescription birth control.

Lisa Subeck, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin, which sought the mandate, said a majority of commercially available health plans in Wisconsin already cover prescription birth control. She did not have an exact figure.

The employers that have so far stated their intent to switch coverage are affiliated with the Catholic Church, which teaches that contraception is immoral because it diminishes God’s role as the giver of life and interferes with the full giving of each spouse to the other.

The Madison diocese expects its costs to rise when it self-insures in August because it will no longer have the leverage of a large health maintenance organization to negotiate lower prices, King said. The diocese provides insurance for about 640 people.

Two other Catholic dioceses in the state – Green Bay and Milwaukee – also buy commercial health insurance and are examining self-funded plans, said John Huebscher, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference. The remaining dioceses in La Crosse and Superior already are self-insured.

Steve Van Dinter, a spokesman for St. Mary’s Hospital, said Catholic hospitals are required to follow the denomination’s ethical and religious directives. Consequently, the hospital will self-insure next year so it does not have to offer prescription birth control to its employees. The hospital insures about 2,100 employees, he said.

Numerous other Catholic hospitals also will move to self-insured plans, including 10 that are part of Ministry Health Care, said Cheryl Zima, the organization’s vice president of human resources. Those hospitals include St. Joseph’s in Marshfield and St. Michael’s in Stevens Point.

Subeck said it is “extremely disappointing” that some employers are choosing to self-insure to avoid the mandate. Many Catholic employers have workers who are secular and perform secular tasks, she said.

“Those folks deserve the same kind of coverage as women everywhere else,” she said.

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