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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After weeks of internal debate, House Republicans have released their plan for the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. It faces challenges from within the GOP, from interest groups — and the public. -
The plan that House Republicans discussed Thursday would replace Affordable Care Act subsidies with tax credits and cut Medicaid funds to the states. -
The White House is proposing changes to the Affordable Care Act to stabilize the insurance market as Congress moves to repeal and replace the sweeping health care law. -
A spokesman said Tuesday that President Trump does want Medicare to be able to directly negotiate prescription drug prices with drugmakers. Analysts disagree about how much difference that would make.
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A poll finds that 75 percent wants Congress to either leave the law alone or wait to repeal it until they have a new law. For most people, controlling high health care costs is top priority.
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Senate Republicans introduced a budget resolution that starts the process to defund key chunks of the Affordable Care Act. President-elect Donald Trump says he'll sign a bill. -
Republicans in Congress have vowed to repeal the health care law as soon as they get back to work. But they don't have a replacement ready, and insurers fear that could cause the market to collapse. -
The last-minute regulation blocks state agencies from withholding federal funds from the family planning organization. -
Repeal of the Affordable Care Act is politically dangerous for Republicans unless they can pass a replacement that covers many of the people who benefit from the health care law.
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Conversations with two people show how the cost of insurance through the Affordable Care Act varies widely, because subsidies and deductibles available are based on individual circumstances.
