Julie Rovner is Chief Washington Correspondent for Kaiser Health News and host of the all-women panelist podcast, KHN’s “What the Health?”
Prior to joining KHN in 2014, she spent 15 years as health policy correspondent for NPR, specializing in the politics of health care. Rovner served as NPR's lead correspondent covering the passage and implementation of the 2010 health overhaul bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
A noted expert on health policy issues, Rovner is the author of a critically-praised reference book Health Care Politics and Policy A-Z. Rovner is also co-author of the book Managed Care Strategies 1997, and has contributed to several other books, including two chapters in Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy, edited by political scientists Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann.
In 2005, Rovner was awarded the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for distinguished reporting of Congress for her coverage of the passage of the Medicare prescription drug law and its aftermath.
Rovner has appeared on television on the PBS NewsHour, CNN, C-Span, MSNBC, and NBC Nightly News. Her articles have appeared in dozens of national newspapers and magazines.
Prior to NPR, Rovner covered health for National Journal’s CongressDaily and before that for the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, specializing in health care financing, abortion, welfare, and disability issues. She has been a regular contributor to the British medical journal The Lancet, and her columns on patients' rights for the magazine Business and Health won her a share of the 1999 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award.
Rovner has a degree in political science from University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.