Alison Kodjak
Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak is a health policy correspondent on NPR's Science Desk.
Her work focuses on the business and politics of health care and how those forces flow through to the general public. Her stories about drug prices, limits on insurance, and changes in Medicare and Medicaid appear on NPR's shows and in the Shots blog.
She joined NPR in September 2015 after a nearly two-decade career in print journalism, where she won several awards—including three George Polk Awards—as an economics, finance, and investigative reporter.
She spent two years at the Center for Public Integrity, leading projects in financial, telecom, and political reporting. Her first project at the Center, "After the Meltdown," was honored with the 2014 Polk Award for business reporting and the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award.
Her work as both reporter and editor on the foreclosure crisis in Florida, on Warren Buffet's predatory mobile home businesses, and on the telecom industry were honored by several journalism organizations. She was part of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists team that won the 2015 Polk Award for revealing offshore banking practices.
Prior to joining the Center, Fitzgerald Kodjak spent more than a decade at Bloomberg News, where she wrote about the convergence of politics, government, and economics. She interviewed chairs of the Federal Reserve and traveled the world with two U.S. Treasury secretaries.
And as part of Bloomberg's investigative team, she wrote about the bankruptcy of General Motors Corp. and the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill. She was part of a team at Bloomberg that successfully sued the Federal Reserve to release records of the 2008 bank bailouts, an effort that was honored with the 2009 George Polk Award. Her work on the international food price crisis in 2008 won her the Overseas Press Club's Malcolm Forbes Award.
Fitzgerald Kodjak and co-author Stanley Reed are authors of In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race that Took It Down, published in 2011 by John Wiley & Sons.
In January 2019, Fitzgerald Kodjak began her one-year term as the President of the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
She's a graduate of Georgetown University and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
She raises children and chickens in suburban Maryland.
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The federal funding of the program lapsed in September. States have been burning through leftover funds, or borrowing from other accounts, as they wait for Congress to act before the end of January. -
The House passed its bill to overhaul the tax code. It would eliminate many popular deductions — including the one for medical expenses. The provision isn't included in the current Senate version.
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The law restricts a major government public health agency's research into gun violence, which kills or injures more people than many other infectious diseases. -
President Trump says the Texas shooting shows that mental health is a "problem of the highest order." This comes amid a debate about mental illness, guns, and his own record on mental health programs. -
Text of legislation, obtained by NPR, offers ways to fix the Affordable Care Act that some Republicans and Democrats favor. Whether it ever becomes law, is a different question.
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The White House has canceled a subsidy to insurance companies. Iowa's Health Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen discusses the state's plan that seeks to lower costs for tens of thousands of residents.
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President Trump says the administration will no longer pay key Affordable Care Act subsidies. The result could be some consumers pay more for insurance coverage and the cost to the government rises.
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The latest effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act appears to be blocked after Maine Sen. Susan Collins opposed the bill. Her opposition means the bill cannot pass the Senate with only GOP support.
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Senate Republicans have a new plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, but some moderate Republicans aren't yet on board.
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Republicans are taking one last shot at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. But the new plan isn't much different from the last one that failed.
