Our Team

Dennis Smith

Dennis G. Smith is Managing Director, Medicaid Practice, at Leavitt Partners. Founded by former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary and EPA Administrator Michael O. Leavitt, the partnership advises clients in the practice areas of health, environment and trade. As Managing Director of the Medicaid Practice, Smith advises clients in ways to create greater value than the current program provides.

Smith brings more than 25 years of public service to Leavitt Partners. He is a Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, one of the most respected policy think tanks in the nation’s Capital. From July 2001 to April 2008, he was Director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations (CMSO) at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMSO directs the $350 billion Medicaid program and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Medicaid and SCHIP are jointly administered by the federal government and the states. As such, he has extensive experience in working with states. He was the Administration’s key negotiator on Medicaid waivers, including ground-breaking demonstration projects approved for Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Under his leadership, CMSO accelerated the shift of Medicaid spending on long-term care from institutions to community-based settings, including self-direction.

His career includes service in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as Medicaid director for Virginia and as Chief of Planning for the California Department of Development Services.

Smith has played a vital role in the passage and implementation of some of the most important health and human services legislation in the last 15 years. He helped shape the Medicaid provisions in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. As a professional staff member for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, he assisted in the creation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. He also worked on the historic welfare reform legislation and the “Adoption and Safe Families” Act.

He has testified more than a dozen times before committees of the U.S. Congress and has been interviewed frequently by print, radio and television media.

Smith has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from George Mason University and completed his undergraduate work at Illinois State University. Smith and his wife Laurel have four daughters.