The Mandate etc

By now everyone has heard of the HHS Mandate and Obama's initial double-down on it.  Now he is attempting what Mark Shea called a head fake.  As I heard it explained on NPR, it basically would require insurance companies themselves to cover the contraceptives of a religious employer, rather than the employer himself.  After a little thought, I realized a few things.  The first is that nothing has really changed. No matter what, the insurance company is the one who writes the checks and not the employer.  The only difference here is that the Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist hospital, school, soup kitchen doesn't have contraception as a line item in the insurance policy.   But it is still there.  I'm willing to bet that the cost of insurance will be exactly the same, or even higher for religious employers who object to contraception than for those who think it is just fine.  Why do I think it will be higher?  I'm willing to bet the insurers will up the premiums to accommodate the extra hassle they need to go through.  It will likely not be signaled out as a separate item in the bills they send as that would be too obvious.   More likely, they will simply increase the base fee for all religious employers so as to appear to not be discriminating.  Essentially, the companies will wind up making even more money off of this deal.
Here's another concern.  What about religious insurers who pride themselves on not providing coverage for abortion and contraception?  I can't think of any but I'm sure there are a couple out there.  They're still stuck.
But can't they just not have insurance?  I thought this might be a possibility.  Don't pay for insurance but still give the employees the money that would have gone to the insurance company.  That way the employees can still afford their own insurance.  That'd be great except that there is this health care legislation that recently passed mandating that everyone have insurance.  So if religious organizations don't actually have insurance they still need to pay a penalty to the government. 
At the end of the day nothing has changed and I pray that our bishops and other religious leaders don't back down for a moment.