Starting in 2025, Medicare recipients with prescription drug coverage will not have to pay more than $2,000 annually for medications, a significant savings for some.

WASHINGTON — After Pete Spring was diagnosed with dementia in 2016, he and his wife emptied their checking account in part to pay for his prescription drugs, then ran through $60,000 in pension payments before resorting to a charge card to help make sure Mr. Spring had the heart and Alzheimer’s medications he needed to survive — just two of the 11 drugs he took.

Mr. Spring, of Marietta, Ga., died in April, before the unveiling of the tax, climate and health bill that the Senate passed over the weekend. The measure aims to lower the cost of prescription drugs for people on Medicare, like him; his wife, Gretchen Van Zile, has been left to look back on what felt like an outrageous injustice.

“Here seniors are in their golden years,” said Ms. Van Zile, 74, “and the only people seeing gold are the pharmaceutical companies.”

Nearly 49 million people, most of them older Americans, get prescription drug coverage through Medicare, yet many find that it does not go very far. Low-income people qualify for government subsidies, so those in the middle class — people like Mr. Spring and Ms. Van Zile — are hit hardest by high drug costs.

Article written by: Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Noah Weiland

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