Perk: Discount on Medical Fees

The current Perk for discounted medical fees only applies to NPC doctors.

This creates a disincentive to use PC doctors or medics because those characters do not have any way to verify or otherwise confirm the discount.

To a certain extent, this can be dealt with ICly. A character can say something along the lies of "I get a discount. Hook me up." to the medical PC. That medical PC can then decide whether or not to charge less for services.

I thought it might be worth discussing here. As a player (OOCly) I want to interact with other PCs and use their services as often as possible. But there is no way my character (ICly) is going to "over pay" for services that he can get less expensively from an NPC.

What do the rest of you think?

If you have 'discount' perks, have you found that you prefer to get services from NPCs who respect those discounts?

If you are a service provider, would you extend the 'discount' to another PC? Would you even if you weren't sure exactly what the discount should be? (The perk is vaguely worded and gives a discount range, not an exact number)

This is likely way out there and way too much work but I think that any jobs that a PC can do that includes a perk should involve indirect payment.

For example:

Doctor heals you in the clinic. The room sees this and ups the bill to X. You heal again and the bill is upped to Y. You eventually get a total. Then the patient pays the room and the room spits out the PC doc's full portion (since the differences is not missing - it's paid by the corp providing the perk).

Same for cabbies. Meters are not optional. If someone is in the back when you drive, meter fares are charged. Rider pays the slot what they own with discount applied. Driver gets the full amount on the other side.

Rinse and repeat for any service a PC should get perks on.

Could you pay the full amount for service and then get reimbursed the difference from your boss? The PC could issue a bill to you as a receipt or something if your boss wanted proof. Or the boss could call the medic/doctor and get verification if they wanted it. I dont know how much of the reimbursement process is done by admins, so that might create more work for them but it seems a way to handle it?

This might be trending into IC info, and if so, my apologies.

When a player tells an NPC doctor to 'heal' them, the doctor tells them how much it will cost.

Can other players in the room hear that conversation / see how much it costs?

If so, that could be used to set a baseline. The PC tells another PC doctor, "I'm suffering from a viscous cut (or whatever). Let's see how much your boss (the NPC) charges me."

That would then provide a baseline for the PC doctor to charge the character with the Perk.

The suggestion is not perfect because I assume that there are varying costs based on how wounded someone is. But in order to not let perfect be the enemy of good enough, I think it's a good way to establish a baseline for 'discount' fees.