Here’s one thing the controversy over health insurance and contraception has taught us: Conservative men need to learn a thing or two about reproductive health.

Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh made this obvious when, echoing other some other conservatives, he suggested women wouldn’t need coverage for birth control if they didn’t insist upon having so much sex. Referring to Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who has advocated for such coverage, Limbaugh said, “She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”

As you've read or heard by now, Limbaugh misrepresented Fluke’s testimony: When Fluke spoke on Capitol Hill, she described the plight of a classmate who needed, but could not afford, birth control medication to treat ovarian cysts. But somewhere in between mangling Fluke’s story and calling her a “slut,” Limbaugh also betrayed some medical ignorance.

Birth control pills aren’t like Viagra: You don’t just pop one whenever you want to have sex. Women must take them continuously, typically once a day, over the course of their menstrual cycles. That’s true whether they have sex once a day or once a month. (Rachel Maddow covered this, along with some other relevant issues, in a very helpful segment last week.)

Alas, the dosage of birth control is not the only misconception floating around on the right. Another is that just about everybody can already get effective contraception at low prices. John McCormack of the Weekly Standard figured that out by visiting the local Target and discovering that generic birth control is available for as little as $9 a month. "It strains credulity to believe that a single Georgetown student can't afford $9 per month for birth control," McCormack wrote.