Thomas Barker serves as a Senior Advisor at Leavitt Partners and is also a member of the firm’s FuturePanel. Mr. Barker is among the Nation’s foremost experts on Medicare and health care legal issues and brings decades of health policy and legislative experience to Leavitt Partners.

Mr. Barker recently left the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services where he served as acting General Counsel for the Department. Presently, Mr. Barker is a Partner in Boston-based law firm Foley Hoag. Mr. Barker splits his time between the firm’s Washington, DC and Boston offices and focuses his practice on complex federal legal and regulatory health care policy matters and general rule makings.

Mr. Barker has served in a succession of high-level federal health care policy positions throughout the Bush Administration and most recently served as acting General Counsel and policy advisor under U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. While serving as acting General Counsel, Mr. Barker oversaw a staff of some 450 attorneys responsible for reviewing every regulation and interpretive guidance published by the Department. He was also in charge of interpreting proposed and enacted health care legislation in Congress, and providing legal advice to Secretary Leavitt, along with the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service and Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

As a member of the Boston Bar Association and the American Health Lawyers Association, Mr. Barker is a frequent lecturer and author on health care legal matters.  He is a magna cum laude graduate of Suffolk University School of Law in Boston and received a bachelor’s degree with honors in English and political science from Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Florida.