I have 3 gammorrean builders with zero experience and 82hp, 1 noghri builder with 72hp. All of the new NPCs have increased health points.
This means that our characters are relatively two, three times(or more) weaker hp-wise, because NPCs are stronger.
What happens with thousands of combat NPCs recruited before health points change? Many of them got much of player`s attention and time spent in training them.
"Hey, there, Mike, what's up? Not much, just hanging around. Say, I saw this cool the ad the other fo- Oh, sweet Ara! Ahhhrrrgg!! Ahhhhh! My hand - it's mutating! I- AH! Damn you, Sin!!"
Only newly hired NPCs have the new HP (probably newly creating characters too). Once Sin gets back it looks like he will run a script to update all NPCs and PCs health that were around before this change.