The point is that they became effective when they abandoned socialism as the economic doctrine. So there is no such thing as "their flavour of socialism". The 20th century showed that socialism does not work and fails dramatically.

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.