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• RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- President Barack Obama's decision a month ago that allowed people to keep insurance policies once slated for cancellation under the federal health overhaul has received a mixed response from insurers, state regulators and consumers.
• In pitching the overhaul, Obama had long promised that people who liked their policies could keep them. But many consumers complained upon getting notification from their insurers in October and November that their individual policies would be canceled because they didn't cover basic benefits required by the Affordable Care Act, such as pre-existing conditions or hospitalization.
• Then, Obama announced Nov. 14 that companies could continue existing policies that don't meet the minimum requirements if state regulators approved.
• Reporting by The Associated Press shows that older policies are being allowed to continue in 36 states, either because officials allowed it after Obama's announcement, decided not to intervene in any way or had made a decision earlier in the year to extend non-compliant policies for a period of time.
• Even so, insurers were given a choice of whether to continue the policies, and some declined to do so.
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• RACELAND, La. (AP) -- A southern Louisiana man attacked his former in-laws, his current wife, and the head of a hospital where he'd worked, killing three before killing himself, authorities said.
• The shootings happened about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans on Thursday, the first reported by Lafourche Parish Councilman Louis Phillip Gouaux about 6:40 p.m. at a home in Lockport, Parish Sheriff's Office spokesman Brennan Matherne said in a news release.
• The suspect, Ben Freeman, 38, was the ex-husband of Gouaux's daughter Jeanne.
• Gouaux's wife, Susan "Pixie" Gouaux, was dead when deputies arrived, Matherne said. Louis Phillip Gouaux and his daughter, Andrea Gouaux, were injured and taken to University Hospital in New Orleans. Both were in critical but stable condi

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