[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 20338]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO MARK E. MILLER

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, today I wish to honor Mark E. Miller, for 
his distinguished public service and professional assistance to the 
Senate Finance Committee, as well as to the rest of Congress.
  Mr. Miller served as the executive director of the Medicare Payment 
Advisory Commission, or MedPAC, for the last 15 years. During that 
time, he dedicated himself to our country, ensuring Congress received 
impartial, data-driven, and sound policy advice to transform the 
Medicare Program while protecting our Nation's seniors and the 
disabled.
  MedPAC was established by Congress in 1997 as part of the Balanced 
Budget Act. It is a nonpartisan agency that provides analysis and 
policy recommendations regarding the Medicare Program, including 
payment, beneficiary access to care, and quality of care for 
traditional fee-for-service Medicare and Medicare Advantage. As all of 
us know, the analysis we get from MedPAC is critical in how we, as 
Members of Congress, debate, address changes, and ultimately make 
improvements to the Medicare Program.
  Throughout his service, Mr. Miller ensured that MedPAC consistently 
fulfilled its mission of providing objective, empirically driven policy 
analysis and advice to Congress.
  Mr. Miller himself also testified, answered calls, and otherwise 
provided invaluable advice on complicated Medicare payment issues to 
both majority and minority leaders, Finance Committee chairmen and 
ranking members, as well as other committee members, and other Member 
offices regarding all things healthcare. Throughout his years of 
service, Mr. Miller has proven himself a trusted source of objective 
information.
  Mr. Miller gave years of his life, including countless long nights, 
weekends, and early mornings to make sure Congress has the best and 
most reliable information it can get. In turn, that analysis has guided 
many ideas and recommendations into legislation that made its way to a 
President's desk for signature. Mr. Miller's professionalism, 
expertise, energy, patience, humor, and dedication make him an example 
to all of us as we work the process of designing and ultimately 
enacting legislation. Mark has been there from the beginning, watching 
an idea being born, helping to develop policy to achieve that idea, and 
providing valuable policy counsel as it works its way through the 
legislative process to ultimately becoming law.
  Thanks to his sense of purpose, dedication, and love for this 
country, Mr. Miller should be seen as just as much an influence on our 
current Medicare policy as most Members in this body. Mark is a 
consummate professional, and he will be missed. I wish him all the very 
best as he takes the next steps in his successful career.
  May we ever remember Mark's service, and may MedPAC ever be guided by 
the same sense of duty and purpose Mr. Miller instilled in his 15 years 
leading that organization.

                          ____________________