corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support is provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios in lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening. thanks for joining us. secretary of defense chuck hagel has ordered the creation of an emergency response team in case additional ebola cases are discovered in the united states. a pentagon spokesman said the team of five infectious disease doctors, 20 critical care nurses and five experts on infectious- disease protocols would work alongside civilian health care workers. the team will be trained by army infectious disease experts starting next week. on the sunday talk shows today, the nation's top infectious disease doctor acknowledged that many smaller hospitals around the nation are not fully equipped to deal with any ebola people to think that any hospital, community hospital is totally equipped to care for the patient. they must be able to identify and isolate and then from there get them to a place where you have pre-trained people who know how to do it. >> sreenivasan: we'll have more on ebola right after the news summary. turning overseas now, american warplanes struck isis targets in syria and iraq nearly two dozen times this weekend, according to central command. heavy fighting is still going on in kobani, the city in northern syria by the turkish border. today, the militants fired more than 40 mortar shells into the city and detonated two car bombs in the city center. some of the shells reportedly fell inside turkey. even so, turkish president erdogan said today his country is opposed to the united states sending arms to the kurdish fighters battling isis in kobani. kurds in turkey have been battling for self-rule the past several decades and the turkish president said today he considers them terrorists. at the vatican, in a sermon delivered to an estimated 70,000 worshippers, pope francis said today the church should not be afraid of change. this a day after bishops from around the world voted down a proposal to make the church more accepting of gays. instead, the bishops reiterated that marriage is only between men and women. the proposal to liberalize church doctrine and supported by the pope actually was approved by a majority of the bishops, but it required two-thirds support to be approved. turning to asia now. there's been more unrest in hong kong this weekend. nearly 70 people were injured and more than 30 protesters arrested following clashes between pro-democracy demonstrators and police. the clashes began friday and continued all weekend. negotiations between the government and student leaders are scheduled to begin tuesday. the protests have been going for three weeks now. in beijing today, despite thick smog, tens of thousands of competitors, many wearing masks, competed in a marathon. according to the u.s. embassy, the particulate matter in the air was up to 16 times the level considered safe by the world health organization. the organizing committee provided more than 100,000 sponges at stations along the route so runner could clean themselves off. elsewhere in asia today, troops from north and south korea traded gunfire for the second time in the past several days. this comes after high-level officials from the two countries met earlier this month and agreed then to hold another round of talks soon. president petro poroshenko of ukraine said today russia has agreed to supply ukraine with natural gas throughout the coming winter. he said the deal was struck during a meeting he had friday with russian president vladimir putin. during the same meeting, the two sides also reportedly made progress on a more permanent peace deal between the ukrainian government and pro-russian rebels. skirmishes have continued for several weeks, even though a ceasefire has been in place. despite fears that it might encourage high-risk sexual behavior, the largest gay rights organization in the united states is calling on insurers to provide more generous coverage of a pill that can reduce the risk of hiv transmission by 90 percent or more. the group, known as the human rights campaign, calls the pill truvada "a critically important tool" in fighting hiv, the virus that causes aids. the group is also urging manufacturers to cut the price of the drug, that ranges from 8,000 to 14,000 a year. for more about west africa's fight against ebola, we are for more about west africa's fight against ebola, we are joined now from washington via skype by helene cooper of the new york times. she recently returned from liberia. i understand you were out and about when you first got home. in fact, you were on meet the press last sunday. i understand you are on some sort of self-imposed quarantine now. >> it is sort of a modified quarantine as well, i came back from liberia on saturday and i went on meet the press. i am not symptomatic, i have been taking my temperature and all of that but then i started thinking about it when it is time to go back to the office and go to the pentagon which is where i actually work often and i realized that a lot of people were going to feel weird around me, so i worked it out with the times that i would work from home, i wouldn't go into the pentagon and into the press bullpen which is a crowded area and what i i am trying to do is just for the rest -- until i reach the 21 day point is to stay away from crowds, i am not touching anybody, i am basically behaving the same way i did while i was in liberia, which is don't touch anybody, no hugging, no kissing none of that and don't allow anybody to touch me. if i do get sick by some chance and people are, have contact, i would lick to be oh wow she didn't touch anybody for 21 days so you are not having to put other people under observation because of me. >> this is advice from doctors you got when you came back or this is -- >> no, this is not advice. this is much more, i think we are all trying to feel our way around this and strike a balance between caution and panic. i am taking my temperature, i have never been more intimate, the way my temperature is in my life and i tend to stay between 97.6 and 98.4, even though i did once go up to 98.5 and streak out. >> the kriens is that i am not sick because i didn't touch anybody while i was in liberia and you don't get ebola unless you come into contact with the bodily fluids of a symptomatic ebola patient but i understand a lot of people feel uncomfortable at the idea of being anybody near somebody who has been to high berea so in a way this is much more psychological but i also think there is some things that we maybe perhaps don't understand about the disease so i am just trying to be as cautious as possible and to sort of treat everybody i come -- everybody i see the same way i would treat my four-year-old nephew, who i definitely am not touching for 21 days. so my sort of the way i am looking at it is, of if i am not going to touch cooper for 21 days for 21 days i won't touch anybody for 21 days. >> paint a picture what it was like on the streets of liberia, a totally different healthcare infrastructure and some of the images we have seen coming from the country have been so graphic in how people are literally lying on the ground outside of hospitals waiting for care. >> i didn't see people lying on the ground outside hospitals because i think that the reporting on that is maybe a couple of weeks old, but what you do see on the street in high berea right now is people .. not touching, you don't see people holding hands, you don't see people hugging and kissing and that sort of thing. the daily life of the liberian has in many ways almost come to a screeching halt. the government of liberia has closed all nonessential services and schools are not open, so you have, if you are looking at the ordinary liberian who does not have ebola, they are dealing with, you know, transportation is a lot harder, they are not going into the office and one of the things that really struck me as so many people with school age children are mock are, locking the kids up in the house and iand so you do have a case r instance my sister who is a nine-year-old daughter, my that's that's has been locked in the house for two months so it is really difficult for her and for those sorts of people but then you have the other side of the equation, these are the people coming in contact with ebola and there you see suffering of the magnitude that was very hard for me to sort of get any head around because one of the worst things about this disease is it makes pariahs out of the people who get it so if you get ebola, people around you are not going to want to touch you, they are not going to -- it has become you immediately become, you are sick, you are vomiting and have diarrhea and at the same time you are sort of -- you are a menace to anybody else around you an that's one of the things that really struck me about it and yet in the middle of all of that you still have people trying to take care of these people who are sick. at great peril to themselves, people now to put on gloves and masks and that sort of thing, but this is a poor country where everybody doesn't have access to that, so it is really heartbreaking, it is one of the hardest reporting experiences i have ever had. >> is the u.s. intervention we had planned on deploying thousand of marines marines in the area, is that making a difference? >> not yet but it is starting to. i went in, when i first arrived i came in with the u.s. military and i spent a lot of time with them and they are building, working toward building 17 treatment units but it is definitely seems like they were in a race against time and they are trying to catch up with the disease that is galloping ahead of them. so the construction has started while i was there on several of these centers, these military guys are in there and they are doing their best and they are going as far as -- as fast as they can but there is some frustration because this sort of thing takes time. it is not as easy or as fast as a lot of people would like. i think now we are seeing the point now they have stood up one of the hospitals and they are working on several other that have started and i think you are now seeing the point where that you are starting to see benefit on the ground. one thing that really, it really did do, i think, is the arrival of the american military gave a lot of liberians hope, you know, sort of like hope that maybe other people are coming in to help them. they are not on their own. they have a lot of optimism when the american military showed up. >> yes, at the same time we have liberian president saying on the bbc newshour, sort of wrote a letter to the world, quote it is the duty of all of us as global citizens to send a message we will not leave millions of west africans to defend for themselves against an enemy whom they do not know and have no defense. >> it is just -- it is tragic that we have literally got a president now that is just pleading for help around for the international community to get in there. >> it is. the whole response has been a lot slower than the disease, and that is the biggest problem. i mean, i kept asking people, what took -- why have they taken to the end of september for us to start for the international community to get? and you know, there is not really a real answer to that. everybody thought, it seems as if the cdc, who, all of these different entities thought this was going to go away. in march when this first entered liberia, you know, there was a brief moment and then things seemed to get under control and then it showed up again in june. and so it took a long time, a couple of people even said well a lot of people are on vacation, it didn't take, you know, people didn't realize how big of a deal this was going to be and that is sort of the fact of where we are right now. >> considering you were on the streets in liberia where ebola is far more rampant, compared to the united states, now that you are back, and the reaction to ebola that you must have seen on cable news and elsewhere, compare the two for us. >> well, that is a really good question. i have to say people are like a lot more calm than they are here. they seem -- there is a resignation in liberia to this -- the fact they are dealing with this, and lie perrians seem to know a lot more about how it is spread and that is natural he because they have been dealing with it since march. so people in liberia, the average person on the street, you know, is not touching anybody but they also seem to know you are not going to catch ebola from somebody touching you, you are going to catch ebola from a similar tick. >> symptomatic that is key, symptomatic ebola patient so you are not seeing the panic on the streets in liberia, not necessarily on streets here but you see when you turn on cable news and you see, you hear about all of these different instances of people their children from school and that sort of thing here and i think their tolerance for risk is probably a lot higher than we are here, that our tolerance for risk here in the united states. >> all right, helene cooper of "the new york times" joining us under house quarantine, so to speak in washington, d.c. via her phone. thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> >> sreenivasan: and now to our signature piece. less than a year ago, after the website where americans could sign up for health insurance under the affordable care act was finally fixed, there were almost daily reports about how many people were enrolling. the impression that may have been left was that getting insurance would lead to getting care. but a recent report by the inspector general at the department of health and human services says access to medical care varies widely from state to state. as a result, it says, medicaid patients still often wait months or travel long distances to see a doctor. the newshour's stephen fee traveled to chicago recently, where he met a woman suffering from mental illness who has struggled to get care her entire life and still did even after she was insured. >> reporter: gail davis is 52 years old and lives on chicago's south side. every day she prepares lunch for her 82 year old mother who suffered a stroke. gail is her mom's primary caregiver, yet gail herself has struggled for decades with mental illness. >> i was like that i guess before when i come into the world i guess. i didn't match up, and i didn't seem to blend in with society, what society says what the world says this is what you have to be and do. >> reporter: for years, anger, depression, and anxiety all kept gail from holding a job. and she didn't have health insurance. that meant that for much of her life, except a few emergency room visits, gail's mental conditions went untreated. >> people with serious mental illnesses generally don't show up to the doctor's office. they don't make medical appointments and psychiatric appointments. >> reporter: that's mark ishaug- - he runs thresholds, chicago's largest nonprofit mental health provider. he says gail's story isn't unique among the millions of low-income, uninsured americans with mental illness. >> so people with a serious or persistent mental illness in general have been treated very badly by the health care system. either they haven't had insurance and so they weren't able to get care, or they used emergency rooms in hospitals for their care. and it's really hard to engage people and convince them that they can get help and they can be treated well. >> reporter: in 2010, a family member referred gail to a mental health clinic in her neighborhood run and paid for by the city of chicago. it was the first time in her life she'd seen a therapist. >> he's been a good force. he come into my life at the right time because that's probably what i needed all along. >> reporter: but during the recession, illinois was under financial strain. from 2009 to 2012, the state cut mental health spending by $187 million dollars, a pattern that was happening nationwide. during the same period, states slashed overall mental health budgets by $1.6 billion. and that meant mental health clinics like gail's were suddenly on the chopping block. by the end of 2012, chicago had closed half of its outpatient mental health clinics, including gail's. >> it's like we was dismissed. and that was the hardest part. >> reporter: but the chicago clinic closures, along with similar mental health facility closures around the country, weren't just about budget cuts. when the affordable care act, or obamacare, was signed in 2010, it included a provision to expand medicaid. 27 states, including illinois, have opted in to the plan, which means the federal government, rather than states, will pay for treatment of newly qualified low-income people like gail. bechara choucair has been chicago's public health commissioner for five years. >> now all of a sudden they have more options. and if they choose to transition to another provider, we support them through that transition. >> reporter: just here in illinois, 120,000 people with persistent mental illnesses are expected to enroll in medicaid who weren't eligible before the new rules came into effect. but of course being eligible for insurance doesn't necessarily mean you're getting the coverage you need. for gail, signing up for medicaid complicated her mental health care. after her clinic closed, her therapist began visiting her at home. but according to her medical records, gail's therapist in mid-2013 was forced to inform her that mental health services would likely have to wind down and that she could only continue services if she dis-enrolled from her medicaid plan. a city spokesperson says there was initially uncertainty over whether medicaid recipients could continue seeing city therapists, but that clinicians were never told services had to cease. nevertheless, gail went a year without seeing a mental health professional. >> if this is something that's working and this is somebody that i build a bond with, why break that up. you know, because i felt like that was really useless and senseless. >> reporter: mark heyrman is a law professor at the university of chicago and advocates for people with mental illness. he says they have a particularly difficult time when they move out of publicly financed facilities and must find new providers on their own using medicaid. >> losing that human connection and a place that they've gone for treatment for quite a few years and being told, "now you must go find a new person to be connected to." that's a difficult thing. and people fall through the cracks. they fail to show up. >> reporter: so far, heyrman says figuring out just how many people like gail have slipped through the system is nearly impossible. >> i think the answer is we don't know yet. and unfortunately no one has the money or the time or wants to invest their money and time in sort of really figuring out what is happening to everyone who has a serious mental illness. >> it's gonna be a wild ride i think over the next several years. >> reporter: harold pollack is a public health researcher, also at the university of chicago. he's an expert on the national health care reform law and a supporter of it. he says gail's difficulties show how important it is to help vulnerable people navigate the system. >> because it's not enough to just insure people. you actually have to have systems in place that are effective and economical and credible. >> reporter: is medicaid and the private health insurance expansion enough to get people in chicago who have persistent mental illness the care that they need? >> medicaid and private insurance, they're... that's just what it is. it's insurance. it doesn't mean that it's care and it doesn't mean that it's access to care. but it's a necessary precondition to what we're able to do. >> reporter: not everyone agrees though that medicaid expansion is the necessary first step. twenty states have decided not to expand their medicaid programs mostly out of cost concerns. the federal government has agreed to pay 100% of expansion costs, but that figure steadily declines to 90% by 2020. so far, the a.c.a. has survived court challenges and repeal efforts, and analyst harold pollack says the emerging consensus among states may be more about fixing implementation problems than eliminating the law altogether. >> i do think that governors, both democrats and republicans are... you know, they do raise a number of very valid points with the obama administration that say, "you know, health reform has to be tweaked so that it actually works well." and as we start to really implement the affordable care act, we will discover various things that have to be fixed along the way. >> reporter: president obama has said he welcome ideas to modify health care reform as problems arise. >> i will always work with anyone who is willing to make this law work even better. >> reporter: meanwhile, back on the south side of chicago, gail davis is seeing her city-funded therapist again. are you getting the help and the assistance that you need to keep yourself healthy? >> not like it should be, you know. but that as i speak will change because i do have an appointment by the way next friday. >> reporter: though the city mental health clinics aren't taking gail's medicaid plan, they are keeping patients like her on board at least for now. >> sreenivasan: to learn more about the people being served by chicago's largest non-profit mental health care provider, visit newshour.pbs.org. >> sreenivasan: britain is taking steps to crackdown on internet trolls-- those who intentionally post inflammatory and even threatening comments online. victoria mcdonald of itv has our report. >> the most recent of many high profile troll attacks on celebs, last week she received online threats after she defended her mother against comments about the convicted rapist chad evans. now the government has announce add crackdown that is even being called in the tabloid press, cloy's law. >> six months is the most anybody can be sent to prison at the moment for this type of crime, the government wants to change that to two years, and they want the police to be given three years to investigate. >> there are no figures for how many people have been trolled that is abused online, but celebs and politicians do find themselves targeted. stella crease situate received vial abuse on twitter after supporting a campaign to put jane austen on the ten-pound note. >> that particular troll was later jailed for 18 weeks. >> the government describes this as a stand against cyber mob yet there are those who believe does not bring the law up to date. >> we still have a problem that these laws were written before the internet and they were written to deal with communications that weren't online so this is still if you report something, where is the computer that you received this threat on because that is how we decide the jurisdiction of this complaint, and that is a very looking at a digital problem, i think. >> it has raised issue of what is illegal, what people can and cannot say online. >> she put it another way. this is not freedom of speech, she said. this is online terrorism. and therefore, richard said to her daughters troll prosecution awaits you. >> >> some more news before we leave you tonight. health officials in spain say a nursing assistant who treated two patients with ebola and later contracted it herself is now free of the disease. and the fiance and family of thomas duncan the patient who died in dallas and their 21 day quarantine end tomorrow. fiance released a statement today saying none of them have shown any sign of illness. >> i am hari sreenivasan, thanks for watching and we will see you tomorrow might. >> captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we are your retirement company. additional support is provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> explore new worlds and new ideas through programs like this, made available for everyone through contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. van's rock 'n' roll classics: smash hits of the sixties-- music that changed the world. >> ♪ you'll let me hold your hand ♪ >> the tv appearance that made the beatles superstars. >> ♪ get 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