Once again: not ObamaCare. Got that?

Let the demonization of the insurance companies begin!

Obamacare’s biggest problem isn’t the troubled HealthCare.gov website anymore.

Consumers are easing up on criticism of government exchanges and turning their frustration and fury toward some of the nation’s biggest health insurers. All too often, new policyholders say, the companies can’t confirm coverage, won’t answer basic questions, and haven’t issued identification numbers needed to fill prescriptions or get medical care.

Day after day, people say, they contact insurance company call centers waiting hours at a time with no response. Meantime, insurers have already taken many customers’ payments for coverage intended to take effect Jan. 1.

Stupid insurance companies! There’s no way this backlog could have been caused by the utter incompetence of the Obama administration in failing to ready the Web site and forcing last-minute changes on insurance companies due to the administration’s own mismanagement. Right?

The story raises the possibility very quickly, only to immediately bat it down with a quote from some random chucklehead:

Industry officials say the disastrous launch of the federal exchange and the ever-changing rules from the Obama administration have complicated their job and contributed to the backlog.

“Health plans have gone above and beyond to protect consumers from disruptions caused by the ongoing problems with HealthCare.gov” and some state exchanges, said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group. “The last-minute changes to deadlines and rules have made the process more complicated and time-consuming.”

But some consumers think big insurers had plenty of opportunity to get ready.

“Insurance companies of this size should have been far better prepared. They knew it was coming,” said Katherine Kokko, 34, a public-health consultant in New Hampshire.

It’s a beautiful thing to watch this newspaper cover for Obama, isn’t it?

Reader JVW sends along this telling screenshot from the Los Angeles Times:

As JVW says:

[W]hen a Democrat proposes new spending in an election year it is all about wanting to help schools and give people healthcare. But when Republicans talk about changing the the way we fight poverty it is just an election-year gimmick trying to make them appear less heartless.

Indeed.

How abysmal? Even the Los Angeles Times can’t spin this:

U.S. employers added a measly 74,000 new jobs last month, the government said Friday. That was the lowest jobs number in about three years and a major disappointment after a recent string of positive economic signs pointed to stronger growth.

The weak hiring confounded most analysts’ expectations for job growth of about 200,000, which was the monthly average of the prior three months. The construction sector, rather than resurging as some had predicted, shed a large 19,000 jobs to close out the year, although Labor Department officials said bad weather in parts of the country may have affected the payroll count.

Not confounded: Patterico readers, who know that the economy is in the toilet and won’t be coming out as long as the solution is more unemployment benefits, more ObamaCare, more regulation, and more government.

Fewer and fewer people are even looking for work:

Even as job growth was anemic, Labor Department officials reported that the nation’s unemployment rate fell to a new five-year low of 6.7% last month, from 7% in November.

However, the unusually large drop was for the wrong reason: Rather than more people entering the job market because of increasing confidence, there was a big drop of 347,000 in the labor force.

The so-called labor participation rate — the share of working-age people with jobs or looking for work — fell to 62.8% last month, from 63%, matching the level of two months ago that was the lowest since February 1978.

I’ll give the paper credit for at least not making the story (and headline) all about how the unemployment number fell.

But you know the rules: they’re allowed to tell more truth once the candidate is safely elected.