Use Medicaid Waivers to Restore Psych Beds

States and cities should actively pursue every available federal exception and Medicaid waiver to fund psychiatric hospitals and expand inpatient capacity, rather than defaulting to emergency‑room boarding or routing patients to general hospitals ill‑equipped for severe mental illness. Doing so requires a focused budget reallocation and a legal strategy to navigate the IMD exclusion. — If jurisdictions adopt waiver‑first strategies, it could materially reduce ED boarding, lower criminal justice spillovers, and reshape local fiscal priorities for mental‑health care.