1. Based on the discussion of health plans in the text and the description in this case, why do you think GE wanted to move all employees into consumer-driven health plans?
2. What are the risks of this change? How can GE decide whether those risks are worth taking?
3. What aspects of the plans would you expect employees to be worried or upset about? How could human resource management address those concerns?

It’s been a hard year to work at General Electric. Salary freezes have hit its famously performance-driven employees, with some managers taking pay cuts. The price of GE stock, which once made millionaires out of even hourly workers, has gone nowhere as the rest of the market has risen. A 68 percent dividend cut—the first in 71 years—has stung execs who rely on a heavy dose of restricted shares.
And now GE is making changes that could deal another blow to morale. The company is forcing 75,000 salaried U.S. employees and 8,000 retirees under the age of 65 to choose what’s known as a consumer-directed health plan, which includes deductibles that run as high as $4,000 a year. Traditional plans, where employees pay higher premiums in exchange for predictable co-pays up front, are no longer available for salaried workers. One employee says his colleagues “are looking at this as a cut in pay.”