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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A recent study shows the cost of brand-name drugs is rising — not because of expensive new therapies entering the market but because manufacturers are raising prices on existing drugs. -
A federal judge in Texas issued a ruling Friday declaring the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, apparently setting the stage for another hearing on the health care law by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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The pace of enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans was slower than in past years. About 8.5 million people enrolled in health plans for 2019 through the federal HealthCare.gov. -
To protect a developing fetus from experimental drugs or treatments that might cause birth defects, pregnant women aren't included in many clinical trials. But that limits the safety evidence, too. -
Ballot initiatives in Utah, Nebraska and Idaho will determine whether to expand Medicaid, after legislators refused to do so. Montanans will vote on whether to keep the state's expansion intact. -
In signs the health care market may be maturing, an analysis of insurance filings shows premiums will rise less than 4 percent on average and companies plan to market more policies in more places. -
A survey by the research group NORC at the University of Chicago shows 57 percent of American adults have been surprised by a health care bill that their insurance didn't pay for. -
Companies that negotiate drug prices for insurance plans keep a big cut of the money. In Ohio, a battle is brewing over whether their services are worth the cost. -
The Trump administration on Wednesday releases its final rule on short-term health policies that don't have the same consumer protections as plans governed by the Affordable Care Act.
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NPR's Alison Kodjak and the Center for Public Integrity have been looking at how the drug industry tries to keep Medicaid money flowing. Here they examine the industry's massive lobbying efforts.
