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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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. -
Rather than sweeping reform, Clinton's health plan is a collection of tweaks to the Affordable Care Act. The proposed changes are aimed at trimming consumer costs and improving coverage. -
Left-leaning economists and Democratic analysts are sparring over Sanders' proposal of health care for all, paid for by the government. Some who like his aspiration say the numbers don't add up. -
After controversial pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli left the hearing on Capitol Hill, the representatives' attention turned to why prices for some drugs are rising so steeply. -
Congressional investigators have pried loose emails showing how the company's executives anticipated huge profits from a 5,000 percent drug price increase. They were blindsided by the blowback. -
The generic form of the blockbuster cancer drug is being shipped to pharmacies. The generic is likely to cost 30 percent less than the brand-name version, but Gleevec's price doubled in recent years. -
Millions are still uninsured, even as the Jan. 31 deadline to sign up for a plan under the Affordable Care Act approaches. No deadline extensions this year, federal health officials warn. -
Health insurers are trying to spark a price war by refusing to pay for some brand-name medications unless they get a big discount. This forces some people to change their prescriptions. -
Health insurers are trying to spark a price war by refusing to pay for some brand-name medications unless they get a big discount. This forces some people to change their prescriptions.
