Leading up to his death:
For those of you outside of the community (and possibly wondering why the furry side of social media is on fire), Dragoneer did a hell of a lot for the furry community. FurAffinity is the largest furry art host and social network; he could have sold out and allowed AI, or made the site friendly to corporate advertising, but he didn’t.
He intentionally didn’t.
If he had, he probably would have been able to afford healthcare, but he didn’t.
He died because he wanted to keep the site in the community instead of whoring it out to corporations, resulting in him not having the money for healthcare when he needed it the most. I wish I’d been more aware of what was going on because I would have chipped in to help (if he’d allowed it).
It makes me fucking furious that the US, the country with the highest GDP in the world by 10 TRILLION DOLLARS, still allows this to happen.
RIP Dragoneer, we’ll never forget you. Wherever you are, I hope it’s filled with fur, feathers, scales and wagging tails.
Edit: made some formatting edits
If I were American, I am certain that I would be dead, because when I was a teenager, I had some surgery to correct something that had a pretty severe impact on my quality of life, but would have been difficult to justify the cost of if I’d had to pay. It baffles me how much you guys have to pay even with a “really good” insurance policy. I think I’d have probably killed myself if I hadn’t been able to get that surgery.
It’s why it hurts so much to see how the NHS has been gutted. The UK has European level taxes, and seems set on American level public services. The worst of both worlds.