What I think is "absolutely insane" is how oblivious of recent history people are. Up until the 1980s half of Europe was socialist, and it is at that time that China started moving away from a socialist economy, too. It was abandoned everywhere.
As for healthcare, unfortunately that has been a collateral victim of this. Benefits used to be tied to the "work unit" in a very traditional socialist style (soviet, commune, etc) but this disappeared when socialism was abandoned and now either you can pay or you die.
No, the economy was destroyed at the time of Mao's death and it was the market-oriented reforms that came afterwards that started the economic boom.
HN always manages to produce extra strange posts.