I get really tired of the way the right, and the religious right in particular, uses the “money is fungible” argument to claim that they’re paying for people’s abortions and contraceptives.

Just to keep this simple, I am going to focus on one particular claim, made by Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner:

The culture war isn’t religious versus secular. It’s a clash of two faiths.

Interestingly, mandate champion Sandra Fluke provides us with a way out: “Your boss shouldn’t be involved in your health care decisions — that’s common sense,” she wrote this week.

Exactly. Your boss shouldn’t be telling you what pills to take, and he shouldn’t be paying for your pills. To get peace in this arena, we have to disentangle employment from health care, which requires repealing parts of Obamacare and scrapping the tax preferences for employer-based insurance.

Forget about the part where he argues for scrapping employer-provided health insurance. Let’s look at the claim that employers are paying for your pills.

Now, most people consider their benefits package at work to be part of their overall compensation package. Your health care plan isn’t really different in kind from the company match for your 401(k) or your salary. It’s what you earned in return for your labors, and you are the one being paid, not the doctor or the dentist or the insurer or the pharmacy. But let’s forget about that.

Let’s talk about whether or not offering women free contraceptive coverage on a company-supplied health insurance plan actually winds up “costing” the employer any money. In the end, making sure that the women in your workforce have access to contraceptives will mean that fewer of them will get pregnant, which means that fewer of them will incur the costs and health risks associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and covering new people on the plan. It also means fewer women will be taking maternity leave or quitting to be stay-at-home moms. There will, therefore, be fewer productivity losses and less need to invest in training for new employees.

So, in what sense can the employer be said to be paying for anything. If they are saving money, they aren’t paying. What these folks are saying is that money is fungible for them but not for you. When you spend your own money, which they paid you, to buy the pill, they don’t count that. They paid for your contraception just like they paid for your heating and your internet connection. But that doesn’t count. But if you use this other slice of compensation called health insurance, now they do count it. Now, they’re paying for it. Except, because you’re using that slice to get contraception, it costs them less to give you the slice.

What Tim Carney doesn’t understand is that the very premise of his argument is fatally flawed. Employers do not pay for people’s contraception because it actually saves them money to provide it.

Now, if we’re talking about forcing a photographer to work a gay wedding, you have something that at least warrants some kind of debate. We may not ultimately agree on that, but at least I’ll agree that the premises are honest.