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 premiums on benchmark plans are increasing by an average of 22 percent in 2017, the government says, but more than 70 percent of people can get one for less than $75 a month after subsidies. -
Parents look for a place where their child will be loved and happy, but often have to make decisions based on cost and location. Researchers are looking for a rich developmental experience. -
Three former leaders of an influential task force that issues guidelines for preventive care says insurance coverage for highly rated tests and services shouldn't be mandatory. -
In testimony prepared for a congressional hearing, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch says the company makes about $50 in profit on each EpiPen. Analysts say it's still a hefty margin. -
Bosses are passing more of the cost of health insurance on to workers in an effort to keep spending under control. But that can be unfair to lower-income employees, who pay disproportionately more. -
A Wisconsin clinic provides free dental care so that poor rural residents can get their teeth fixed. But in most states people aren't so lucky. Millions of people have no access to dental care. -
Manufacturers didn't provide data showing the chemicals are safe and effective, the FDA says. It says there's no evidence that they do a better job at preventing illness than plain soap and water. -
Mylan's move comes amid pressure from consumers and Congress to lower the allergy drug's price. In less than 10 years, the price has risen from about $100 to more than $600 for an injector two-pack. -
EpiPen, the new poster child for prescription drug price gouging, may find that offering discount coupons isn't enough to mollify its critics in Congress and online. -
Lawmakers are demanding answers as to why the price of EpiPens, which are used to stop life-threatening allergic reaction, keeps going up. The company said Thursday it will reimburse some of the cost.
