CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Congress passed it last month, the president signs it in just a few hours, the Long-Term Health Care Bill provides insurance coverage to government workers and retirees with chronic illnesses. White House correspondent Major Garrett has more from 1600 Pennsylvania. Good morning, Major.</s>MAJOR GARRETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Well, you know, all the conversation on the campaign trail this year about HMO reform, prescription drugs, one would think that the Congress and the White House couldn't accomplish anything when it comes to health care. Well not exactly so. As you mention, today, the president will sign a long-term care health bill, and what it will do is it will provide access for about 20 million Americans to obtain long-term care insurance. Now what is long-term care? Long-term care involves care at home or nursing home for someone who can't cloth themselves, can't cook their own food, or can't get around the house as well as they used to. There are 35 million Americans who are 65 years and older, primarily long-term care is needed by those Americans. Of that 35 million, 5.2 million actually need nursing-home care around-the-clock care at their home. And this is very, very expensive care. If you go to a nursing home, on average in this country, over a year, you are going to spend about $50,000. Of course, in urban areas, it is much more expensive than that. In total, in this country last year, more than $123 billion was spent on long-term care. Now what the bill the president is going to sign today will do is it will allow federal workers, military workers, their immediate family, spouses and survivors to purchase long-term care insurance at group rates, which are sometimes 20 percent less than those rates that are charged to individual consumers. What the White House and Congress hopes is that the private insurance market will see this and respond in kind, offering group rates to employers and businesses around the country to get more people to buy this insurance themselves so when the time and the need comes they have protection to pay these very, very high bills -- Carol.</s>LIN: All right, thank you very much, Major. We'll be watching for that vote today.
Clinton to Sign Long-Term Health Care Bill