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Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.

John Ydstie

John Ydstie has covered the economy, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve at NPR for nearly three decades. Over the years, NPR has also employed Ydstie's reporting skills to cover major stories like the aftermath of Sept. 11, Hurricane Katrina, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He was a lead reporter in NPR's coverage of the global financial crisis and the Great Recession, as well as the network's coverage of President Trump's economic policies. Ydstie has also been a guest host on the NPR news programs Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. Ydstie stepped back from full-time reporting in late 2018, but plans to continue to contribute to NPR through part-time assignments and work on special projects.

During 1991 and 1992, Ydstie was NPR's bureau chief in London. He traveled throughout Europe covering, among other things, the breakup of the Soviet Union and attempts to move Europe toward closer political and economic union. He accompanied U.S. businessmen exploring investment opportunities in Russia as the Soviet Union was crumbling. He was on the scene in The Netherlands when European leaders approved the Maastricht Treaty, which created the European Union.

In August 1990, Ydstie was one of the first reporters on the scene after Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invaded Kuwait. He accompanied U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia as a member of the Pentagon press pool sent to cover the Iraqi invasion for U.S. media outlets.

Ydstie has been with NPR since 1979. For two years, he was an associate producer responsible for Midwest coverage. In 1982, he became senior editor on NPR's Washington Desk, overseeing coverage of the federal government, American politics, and economics. In 1984, Ydstie joined Morning Edition as the show's senior editor, and later was promoted to the position of executive producer. In 1988, he became NPR's economics correspondent.

During his tenure with NPR, Ydstie has won numerous awards. He was a member of the NPR team that received the George Foster Peabody Award for its coverage of Sept. 11. Ydstie's reporting from Saudi Arabia helped NPR win the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in 1991 for coverage of the Gulf War. In 2016, Ydstie received a Gerald Loeb Award for financial reporting for his contributions to an NPR series on financial planning.

Prior to joining NPR, Ydstie was a reporter and producer at Minnesota Public Radio. Ydstie is a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he is now on the Board of Regents. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, with a major in English literature and a minor in speech communications. Ydstie was born in Minneapolis and grew up in rural North Dakota.

  • Over-all health care cost increases have slowed dramatically, but consumers may not notice it. Many face higher deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket maximums as employers' insurance plans try to encourage them to pay more attention to health care costs. One big problem is health care price information is often not available.
  • The Congressional Budget Office said this year's deficit is likely to be about a third the size it was in 2009, when the Great Recession bottomed out. A better economy is the main reason for the improving deficit, but moderating health care costs help.
  • A new front has opened in the political battle over the Affordable Care Act, with Tuesday's release of the Congressional Budget Office's annual budget and economic outlook. The economists updated an earlier estimate about how many workers would leave the workforce because they no longer needed a job to have health care coverage — revising upward from 800,000 people to over 2 million people. Republicans pounced on the higher number, and President Obama now finds himself playing defense.
  • Health care spending continued to rise in 2012, but it did so at a relatively low rate for the 4th year in a row. The report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Spending said overall spending on health care increased 3.7 percent over the previous year.
  • The Affordable Care Act has produced a surge in the number of people signing up for Medicaid. The ACA offers billions of federal dollars to states to expand Medicaid coverage for the poor. But only 25 states have accepted the federal government's offer, and those that haven't could face economic and budget losses.
  • Millions of Americans are trying to figure what to do now that their health insurance policies have been cancelled. The policies were cancelled because they didn't comply with President Obama's Affordable Care Act. The president now says insurers who offered substandard policies can continue offering them for one more year. But most insurance companies are still figuring what to do, so it's very difficult for individuals to get reliable information, let alone make a decision.
  • The health care law is helping low- and middle-income Americans pay for their insurance. Where does that money come from? In part, it is a matter of the well-off helping pay for those who have less. But that's not the full answer.
  • President Obama repeatedly said that anyone who likes their current health insurance policy would be able to keep it. But insurers have sent hundreds of thousands of cancellation notices to people who buy their own coverage — and some of them face significantly higher costs to get new policies under the Affordable Care Act.
  • Relatively few people have enrolled in new health insurance plans since the Affordable Care Act exchanges launched this month. But some health care experts say it's early days yet — and that getting the right proportion of healthy, young new enrollees is just as important as how quickly people sign up.
  • Many will find better coverage with smaller monthly premiums on the exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act, insurance specialists say. But in states that decided not to expand Medicaid, some low-income part-timers are finding they don't qualify for federal health insurance subsidies.