This morning, Howard Dean walked back from earlier statements encouraging Democrats to “kill” the Senate health care bill. On Thursday, Dean wrote that “this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America,” but during his appearance on Meet The Press, Dean argued that yesterday’s manager’s amendment significantly improved the legislation. “I would let this thing go to conference committee and let’s see if we can fix it some more,” Dean said:

Well, let’s start with the positive things. Over the last week, there were things that were improved. There were some cost containment mechanisms that were gutted. They got restored. I would certainly not vote for this bill if this were the final product, but there are, the House bill is quite a good bill. This bill has improved over the last couple of weeks, I would let this thing go to conference committee and let’s see if we can fix it some more…so there are a lot of things that need to be fixed, but if they are fixed you may actually get the foundation of a bill, coming out of the House. If most of the House provisions survive, then we can have a bill that we could work with…I hope this isn’t the compromise that’s been achieved. I think we have yet to see the compromise that we could achieve.

Watch a compilation:

Dean didn’t advocate for pushing the bill through the reconciliation process or restarting reform after the midterm elections, as he had suggested several days earlier. Instead, the former Vermont governor expressed optimism that the bill could be improved in conference, going so far as to say that some of the goals of the public option could be accomplished through regulatory means.

“Here is the major problem,” Dean said. “We have committed to go down a path in this country where private insurance will be the way that we achieve universal health care. That means we’re going to have a 30-year battle with the insurance industry every time we try to control costs and try to get them to do things.” “My position is let’s see what they add to this bill and make it work, if they can make it work without a public option, I’m all ears. I don’t think that’s possible,” he said.

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, who strongly opposed the Senate bill, also appeared to moderate his position. “This, this is not a done deal, we still have reconciliation to go to,” he said during a round table following Dean’s appearance.

This morning, during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) stressed that the final health care bill will have to reflect the language in the existing merged Senate legislation, suggesting that moderate Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) would vote against the bill if the conference committee loosened the Senate’s abortion restrictions or inserted a public option:

I think any bill is going to have to be very close to what the senate has passed because we’re still going to have to get 60 votes. Anybody who has watched this process can see how challenging it has been to get 60 votes….It is very clear that the bill, the final bill, to pass in the United States Senate is going to be — have to be very close to the bill that has been negotiated here. Otherwise you will not get 60 votes in the United States Senate.

Watch it:

While the Senate has surpassed the all-important 60 vote hurdle, the process of reconciling the Senate bill with the House legislation may create new problems for Democrats and force many progressives to swallow the Senate’s weaker affordability standards and tax provisions:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), a co-sponsor of the restrictive abortion language in the House, has already promised to oppose the Senate’s abortion language while Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Louise Slaughter (D-NY) are raising the possibility that the the Senate’s abortion language may be unconstitutional. In the past, House Democrats have argued that the Senate’s excise tax on so-called Cadillac plans would disproportionately affect union workers or Americans in high-risk professions and claimed that the weaker employer responsibility provision could discourage employers from bringing on new lower income hires.