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 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. -
Seema Verma, the architect of Indiana's Medicaid overhaul, is slated to run the federal agency overseeing the health care program for the poor. She instated mandatory payments from recipients. -
Drugmaker Mylan is launching a generic version of its own EpiPen. The lower price could quiet criticism about the high cost of the brand-name anti-allergy drug. There's also a business twist. -
Six drug companies are being sued for working together to manipulate prices on their generic versions of two widely used medicines. -
The last-minute regulation blocks state agencies from withholding federal funds from the family planning organization. -
Congressional leaders say they want a smooth transition from Obamacare. But insurance consultants say repealing the law before another plan is in place could jeopardize the insurance of millions. -
The number of people who say they are struggling to pay medical bills has dropped by 13 million in the past five years, a study finds. An improving economy and the Affordable Care Act are why. -
Rep. Tom Price has proposed an alternative to Obamacare that emphasizes tax credits, health savings accounts and continuous insurance coverage as a way to deal with existing health conditions.
