man, you really should read your cited source again (and maybe some others, since you have absolutely no clue when you can only cite wikipedia...).
No ad hominems necessary, just provide a different source that pleases you and proves your point.
for clarification; one of the goals was to get the health insurance agencies from red to black, since nearly all German "Krankenkassen" were in the red from 1993-2003 (with a debt of 650 million € in 2003 alone).
Public health insurance in Germany is designed to not generate profit (like the USPS), so that's hardly a problem: After a year ends, the new insurance premiums are calculated based on the bottom line of the past year. And 650 million are a joke: The revenue of the three biggest health insurances alone is way over 100 billion €. If they were in the red, upping the premium from 15.5% to 15.6% for the three biggest insurances alone would have changed that (calculate it for yourself!). Praxisgebühr was a purely political move, and it failed.
That goal was accomplished partially through it.
How can that be if visits have risen? Why was it scrapped if it worked?
But hey, it was just an example.
Then give better examples?
Praxisgebühr hasn't worked because it failed to address the root cause of the negative profit of the insurance companies. Health care premiums are paid relative to the people's wages, and inflation adjusted wages in Germany are shrinking because they are artificially kept low (to fuel Germany's exports at the cost of the rest of the EU), while health care gets more expensive because people get older. In practically every other EU country thats less of a problem because of rising wages:
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Eurozone_real_wages_growth_2000_2008.jpg
Poll
