Pressed on whether insurance companies will actually comply with the new standards and offer free contraception provisions, Lew said the rule will hardly make a dent in insurers’ pockets

“As somebody who has done budgets for a lot of years, usually when people say to me that something doesn’t cost a lot of money, I ask them how could that be? This is the exception to the rule,” Lew told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley.

He went on to explain that when pricing two insurance plans—one with contraception, one without—the plan without contraception costs more than the one with it, as “the total cost of care for a person is higher” without the form of birth control.

“So this will not cost the insurance companies money. It will not put religious institutions in a place where they have to violate their principles,” he said. “I actually think there won’t be as much resistance to this from insurance companies as people might think.”