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 Affordable Care Act is here to stay — for a while at least. NPR looks at tweaks that could help stabilize the health law's marketplaces.
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As the GOP bill to replace the Affordable Care Act begins to move through Congress, reporters for NPR and Kaiser answer your questions about what it might mean for your health plan. -
Some members of Congress say the U.S. government should use the patent rights it owns for any drugs that were developed with federal grants to drive down the prices of those drugs. -
Rep. Tom Price goes before a Senate panel for the first time since being picked to head Health and Human Services. Expect sharp questions about Medicare reform, drug prices and his stock portfolio.
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NPR and the polling firm IPSOS have a new poll out that suggests the public might not be as enthusiastic about repealing Obamacare as their representatives are.
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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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The president-elect has said he will ask lawmakers to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Or he can use regulations and the budget to dismantle the federal health law he calls "a disaster." -
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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The Justice Department is investigating whether several companies colluded to raise prices of generic drugs. A report suggests a lawsuit could be filed this year. -
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.
