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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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. -
While Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency, he repeatedly said he would get rid of the Affordable Care Act. What will happen to Obamacare? Also, we monitor how financial markets are doing.
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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. -
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. -
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. -
The extended debate in Congress over emergency funding for a response to the Zika virus is forcing public health departments to cut existing prevention and treatment programs. -
Blaming a lack of profitability, UnitedHealth says it will drop out of most health marketplaces insurance exchanges next year. The insurer's first quarter profits in 2016 were $1.6 billion. -
The Affordable Care Act has increased access to doctors and helped reduce medical costs. But poll data show 26 percent of U.S. families are still struggling to pay their health care bills. -
Donald Trump has promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and now he has released some more details of how he would do that on his website.
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An NPR poll finds that many people have a low opinion of the health care system, yet they like their doctors. The perception of quality of care varies according to income.
