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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Senators holding hearings this week are looking for quick tweaks that will stabilize the insurance markets and make policies cheaper. Some governors want more federal money and more flexibility. -
Scientists have found an association between talc and ovarian cancer, but they don't agree on exactly what that means. -
The president has already called the opioid crisis an emergency. If he makes it official through a formal declaration, more money and personnel could be available to deal with the epidemic.
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The U.S. government is scheduled to make large payments to health insurance companies to help offset discounts required by the Affordable Care Act. President Trump has threatened to stop the payments.
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The Republican health care bill failed in part because of opposition to shrinking Medicaid. An 11-year-old girl with sickle cell anemia went to Washington, D.C., to make sure that wouldn't happen. -
The Republicans' last-ditch attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act now and replace it later would have caused insurance rates to soar, and millions could have lost coverage within a year. -
Senate Republicans have shelved their health care bill after two more Senate Republicans, Mike Lee and Jerry Moran, announced their opposition to the bill Monday night.
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The Senate Republicans' plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act could bring big changes to many Americans' health care coverage. Here are answers to a handful of scenarios from concerned listeners. -
Senators could have another bit of information on Monday to help their decision-making. The Congressional Budget Office is expected to give its assessment of the bill's impact.
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Republicans and Democrats have different priorities for what the health care bill should do. Some Republicans have already come out against the bill and have said they won't vote for the measure.
