I really enjoyed this chapter, especially the section discussing population decline. I guess that I never realized that many industrialized countries actually have a population decline, while developing countries are experiencing population growth. As someone who is interested in the healthcare administration field, I find this to be very interesting. I believe that our society will change a lot over the next 30 years as we begin to prepare for the higher amounts of people over-65 in comparison to the fewer young adults in the workforce.
I also appreciated how the text mentioned the decline of life expectancy in the United States over the past few years due to opioid abuse. Although the pharmaceutical marketing of opioids has seen major improvements since the early 2000s, I still believe that many Americans are oblivious to the true dangers and affects of opioids, given their extremely addictive nature. In the future years, I hope the U.S. continues to make stricter measures to regulate the use of opioids so that lives can be saved and the life expectancy in the U.S. can increase, rather than decrease due to overdoes of this painkiller.