I am a Czech myself, and old enough to remember that period.

We were all happy to escape the Russian yoke, but the transformation was really challenging, not to mention the potential threat of wars as various ancient ethnic hatreds, suppressed by the defunct empire, reappeared.

A lot of people lost their jobs, a lot of currencies collapsed and took people's life savings with them... There was a wave of crime and various oligarchs tried to lift themselves above the law.

And your healthcare quip is way off. In many places further East, basic healthcare structure collapsed, and diseases like tuberculosis or HIV either returned or spread anew massively.

The situation began improving by re-attachment of the newly free countries to another, more benign empire, which was the EU.