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 Republican health care bill failed in part because of opposition to shrinking Medicaid. An 11-year-old girl with sickle cell anemia went to Washington, D.C., to make sure that wouldn't happen. -
The Republicans' last-ditch attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act now and replace it later would have caused insurance rates to soar, and millions could have lost coverage within a year. -
Tax breaks for the wealthy would be trimmed, and people would get the option to buy bare-bones plans. But big cuts in Medicaid and changes to coverage for pre-existing conditions remain.
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We're answering more questions about the Republican plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, including what the proposed changes would mean for healthy young people and for taxes. -
Senate Republicans on Thursday unveiled their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare. The long-awaited plan marks... -
Senate Republicans are calling their health care bill the Better Care Reconciliation Act. It shares many provisions with the House's American Health Care Act, but goes further in cutting Medicaid. -
Job-coaching and other support services that enable many adults to live in the community instead of institutions will likely be curtailed if the GOP plan to shrink Medicaid becomes law. -
While Medicaid is best known as a health care program for poor people, more than 80 percent of its budget goes to care for elderly people, disabled people and children. -
The president said on Thursday the Affordable Care Act is "dead. It's gone." The Senate is considering repeal legislation passed by the House, but Obamacare isn't faring as badly as Trump suggests. -
The House GOP's bill to replace the Affordable Care Act would all but eliminate the requirement that people buy health insurance and shrink Medicaid coverage. It also cuts taxes for the wealthy.
