I know Dr. Long from my college days at Christendom. He is a seriosu intellect and a good man. Dr. Janet Smith is not in the same class. Dr. Long is not afraid to apply a principle and let it go where it goes. He is a Thomist.
Regarding the issue at hand, those employers who self-insure would surely be formally cooperating with the evil aspectys of the plan.
These folks are part of the crowd who are really Protestant but like pretending to still be Catholic.They want to keep some of the traditions and, of course the property, but they want to write their own religion as they go along based on how their glands move them. This is no different than the argument that it's moral to murder your own children with contraceptives because the benefit of not being horny is the real goal and the infanticide is only incidental.
These folks can leave and join any number of churches that insist they are the true church where they'll be far more comfortable with the Protestant teaching that cooperating with the State child sacrifice machine is no big deal. If such folks don't start leaving soon, the Church is going to finally get around to sweeping out all these husks of Catholics who refuse to accept Church teaching and are in reality not Catholic at all.
JMHO