Marlene,
To figure out how to spend the least money, the key is quantifying "try and not pay for anything". If you get a copy of their coverage details perhaps you can find out how their coverage compares for treatments John might have, including transfusions and phlebotomy, whether their drug formulary covers Exjade, Cytoxan, and other drugs you know by name, whether they mention aplastic anemia, and what coverage they have for "cancer" in general. You don't really know what treatments John might need down the road but this should give you an idea how they cover the types of treatments most common for bone marrow failure diseases.
You should check if John's doctors are covered by their plan. You can probably find out with a phone call to United, and perhaps double-checking with his doctors.
Make sure that there isn't a "pre-existing condition" restriction. Since he's had continuous insurance coverage you'd expect him not to have to wait 6 months (or some other interval) for coverage of SAA to kick in, but you should definitely confirm that.
From what I've read, insurance companies may routinely deny some claims but change their minds if you appeal the determination. They pretty much have to stick to their stated coverage so knowing what's covered and being a squeaky wheel will do patients a lot of good.
Cost savings may be the #1 criteria but there are also the factors like fast claim processing and having claim information available online that go into "customer satisfaction". For that you can use health care rating information, for example the
Virginia Health Information site, to see ratings and comparisons. Which brings up the question of which insurance-rating sites are best. The
National Committee for Quality Assurance is probably a good one. Otherwise, I don't know of sites to recommend, but I know there are site like
Consumer Health Ratings that list or compare the rating sites.
Maybe it would be worth subscribing to the
health site of Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports rated PPO health plans in their September 2009 issue and gave rankings of #33 to Aetna Life Insurance (nationwide) and #39 to UnitedHealthcare (nationwide) if that's the company you are referring to. The two plans had identical ratings, all Cs and Ds, except for "phone customer service" where Aetna got a C and UnitedHealthcare got a D.
These scores were based on reader surveys.