President Obama offered an “accommodation” Friday aimed at ending a rapidly growing rebellion among Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders. They are rebelling against a Department of Health and Human Services Obamacare regulation mandating that they provide health care services that violate key doctrines of their faiths, including morning-after abortifacient drugs, sterilization and contraception. Under the revised mandate, “religious organizations won’t have to pay for these services and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly,” Obama claimed. The key word in Obama’s statement is “directly.” To be intellectually honest, Obama should have added “but we still require them to do it indirectly.”

Here’s why: Under Obama’s revised rule, health insurance companies contracted by hospitals, schools and charitable institutions associated with the religious groups will have to provide the services at no cost to the employees. But there is no such thing as “free” health care services, so ultimately the religious institutions will still have to cover the costs of providing employees with access to the objectionable services. As National Review’s Yuval Levin put it, “the choice for religious employers is still between paying an insurer to provide their worker with access to a product that violates their convictions or paying a fine to the government.”