An employee’s wife had a liver disease and eventually received a transplant. The employer is a relatively small company that has a self-insured health plan. The wife’s numerous treatments caused the company to incur substantial costs. Managers attempted to convince the couple to accept some alternative arrangement for insuring the wife, but no viable alternative existed and she remained under the plan. The employee was told at one point that the company’s options were to fire him or make him an independent contractor without benefits, but nothing was done at the time. About a year later, the employee was fired and sued.