I've worked in a clinical setting for about 5 years, but only at academic centers. Academic centers generally don't care about insurance status. The only time insurance status is an issue is when I need to discharge someone from the hospital, and the social workers are unable to send them to rehabilitation or obtain a home nurse to ease the transition for a few weeks. Generally speaking, when I see a consultation in the ER, or prepare them for the OR, I don't even know what their insurance status is.I realize this is probably different than a private hospital. I have been on the receiving end of hospital transfer requests from private community hospitals for patients who are uninsured, so I don't doubt that some of this suboptimal treatment goes on.Just wanted to say that not all hospitals are coldly calculating and cruel towards the uninsured as mentioned by janibrat.