California has an ambitious goal of signing up about 2 million people for Obamacare. | REUTERS Report: California ACA total inflated

California’s health insurance exchange reported — wrongly — that it had received 5 million hits on its website the first day of Obamacare. State officials said the real number was only about a tenth of that, or 645,000, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Dana Howard, a spokesman for Covered California, as the state exchange is known, said internal miscommunication about the numbers caused the error. “Someone misspoke and thought it was indeed 5 million hits. That was incorrect," the paper quoted him as saying.


California has an ambitious goal of signing up about 2 million people for Obamacare – a big chunk of the seven million the White House wants to get covered in the health insurance exchanges the first year.

( PHOTOS: Obamacare online: File not found)

Like most states, California’s exchange had a rough first day, with computer problems and temporary halts to enrollment and online insurance shopping. Officials had cited the high volume e- the 5 million – as a reason the $313-million online system was so troubled. Glitches and delays persisted on Wednesday.

Federal officials have also been blaming higher than anticipated traffic for the snarls of the website of the federally-operated exchanges serving three dozen states. At least one senior Republican Senate staffer emailed around the article about California Wednesday night.

California was one of the first states to embrace the federal health law and has been seen as a model for implementation. President Barack Obama gave one of his rare health care speeches of the past year in California during a visit there in June.