I still remember some parts though, so if you are interested in how it worked, I can answer your questions. Most definitely it wasn't all that rosy.
One anecdote for not all rosy:
My father is permanently traumatized because he had to get his tonsils removed when he was young and they didn't give him any anesthetics.
This is a description of the most of the Soviet health services.
For example, dentists were using short metal pipe on a thumb when treating kids, so they don't bite or close their mouth.
>"and then the police shoot the dog...and the dog raped the boy...and then the rat shot the police..."
>"and then you have to eated the police...but the dog was eating the rat..."
>"and my grandmother ate the police...and the police turned the dog into lampshade....but the rat raped the police...and now my grandmother is dead inside lampshade dog...."
Sounds like you got local anesthetics. You probably just didn't see the needle due to the angle.
They could get some of the things westerners had, but with extremely low bandwidth.
Going to the dentist now is ... challenging.
Did you manage to form a relationship with someone outside of your initial social circle that persisted beyond the duration of the vacation ?
I recommend amending your offer with some specifics, so that we may better focus our questions on the particulars of time and place. Not to identify you (though that is a risk), but to draw context about the time (relationship with NATO, do computers exist) and perhaps about the specific locale (Okhotsk beaches are probably not like Astrakhan beaches).
There was a system of distribution of pre-paid by the government (and maybe, not sure, there were a subsidized ones) and by big factories, ministries, which often had their own resorts/sanatoriums, vouchers[0] to rest/vacate/heal there.
Add: Sometimes they were a part of incentive and motivation for fulfilling a quota or finishing a project, sometimes as means to penalize someone ("You've been seen in the state unacceptable for a Soviet man, so you are out from the list for putyovka this year!") and of course as means to gamble or obtain something, trading it for things or services.
[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BF%D1%83%D1%82%D1%91%D0%B...