# The nine-dollar-eighty-three premium > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "The nine-dollar-eighty-three premium," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-nine-eighty-three-premium/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou's own Affordable Care Act premium, which he gives as $9.83 a month, and the doctor who asked him why he carried the plan at all. Offered during a October 2025 discussion of the government shutdown and the expiring Obamacare subsidies.* - **Figure given:** $9.83 per month - **Programme:** Affordable Care Act marketplace - **Occasion:** DeProgram, 30 October 2025 - **Context:** Government shutdown over ACA subsidies During an October 2025 discussion of the federal government shutdown and the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) offered his own premium as a data point. His co-host had been describing basic marketplace plans in New York City running to $1,400 or $1,600 a month with $10,000 deductibles. Kiriakou's answer was that his own plan cost him $9.83 a month.[1] ## The doctor's question The figure came with a story attached. Kiriakou said that at his most recent appointment his doctor had asked him why he carried that particular insurance at all.[1] He does not, in the exchange, give the doctor's reasoning or his own answer; the remark stands as a comment on what a heavily subsidised marketplace plan actually buys. The conversation in which the figure appears was about the political stakes of the subsidies rather than the quality of the coverage. Kiriakou and [Ted Rall](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ted-rall) were discussing the shutdown then in progress, the October and November enrolment deadlines, and what would happen to people whose subsidised premiums were about to rise sharply. Kiriakou's contribution was to point out how far apart two people on the same marketplace could be — one paying under ten dollars, another paying more than a thousand.[1] ## Why the figure matters in his account The premium is one of the few concrete personal financial details Kiriakou has volunteered about his life after prison. He has said elsewhere that he lost his federal pension on conviction and expects to work indefinitely. The subsidised plan sits in that context: it is what the marketplace produces for someone with his income, in his county, under the subsidy structure that was the subject of the shutdown fight. He does not present it as an endorsement. In his telling it is offered flatly, as a number, immediately after his co-host's much larger number, and the doctor's incredulity is left to do the editorial work.[1] ## See also ## See also - [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) - [Ted Rall](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ted-rall) - [The nineteen-hundred-dollar premium](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-nineteen-hundred-dollar-premium) ## Sources 1. Deprogram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Hamas Has Won" (2025-10-30), at 20:14. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ1gVL3EvcU&t=1214s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-10-30-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-john-kiriakou-ham/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-nine-eighty-three-premium/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt