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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With price hikes and rising demand, the drug naloxone, which can reverse an opioid overdose, is taking up an ever-larger share of emergency department budgets.
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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.
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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.
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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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The Senate's proposed rollback of the Medicaid expansion could cut off mental health benefits to many people who have gotten care for the first time as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
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The Senate Republicans' plan to overhaul the Affordable Care Act could bring big changes to many Americans' health care coverage. Here are answers to a handful of scenarios from concerned listeners.
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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.
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In TV appearances and meetings with constituents, House Republicans are highlighting parts of the law that protect consumers, while glossing over loopholes that allow insurers to avoid paying.
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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.
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House Republicans released their plan on Monday to redo the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Republicans have voted several times to repeal the law, but President Obama vetoed those attempts.