Officials with California's health insurance exchange say internal miscommunication led them to significantly overstate the number of hits the exchange's website received on the first day people could enroll in it.
Officials tell the Los Angeles Times the site received 645,000 hits on Tuesday, well below the 5 million they initially reported.
Covered California official Dana Howard said the error occurred because someone misspoke and thought the site had in face received 5 million hits.
The figure was cited by California officials as an indicator of the high level of interest in the exchange. They also blamed it for some of the system's problems.
The enrollment portion of the exchange website was offline from Tuesday night until late Wednesday morning.