Democratic leaders in Congress think they are nearing a deal on reforms that would lower the price of prescription drugs , according to multiple sources.

The mood has improved from a few days ago, when the effort to craft a deal on drugs that could pass Congress seemed to have collapsed. At the same time, negotiations are not done yet, and even if a deal does come together, its an open question how much the resulting reforms could actually reduce prices.

What follows is a refresher on how discussions got to this point, a summary of the concepts now under discussion and a look at what those provisions would mean for average Americans based primarily on reports in The Washington Post and Politico , public comments by lawmakers, as well as several sources familiar with discussions who have spoken to HuffPost and requested anonymity.

Those sources cautioned that the situation is fluid, with full support from Democrats in both houses not yet secure. In other words, the pieces of a potential agreement could still change and the whole discussion could still fall apart.

The Big Debate Over High Drug Prices

President Joe Biden and Democrats have said they want to give the U.S. government the same kind of authority to limit drug prices held by the governments of other developed countries. In practice, that would mostly mean negotiating prices of some drugs directly with manufacturers and capping inflation that is, restricting how much prices can go up year after year.

The hope has been to include a drug pricing initiative in the larger Build Back Better legislation Biden and party leaders have been crafting. And the idea has lots of support among Democrats in Congress including both progressives and front-line, politically vulnerable House members , who have noted that the idea would be popular even with their Republican-leaning constituents.

But despite consistent poll findings to back up that instinct and despite the fact that Democrats have been promising this kind of action for more than 15 years the idea has run into staunch opposition from a handful of Democratic lawmakers , including Rep. Scott Peters (Calif.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.).