You remember wrong. Any medical facility, including medics and scripts(this setDammage 0), can heal you to full strength almost instantly in OFP and Arma. I haven't really looked into that in Arma2, but I believe it's the same thing.
edit: It wouldn't probably be hard to mod away the healing action from the facilites and units, or do as some mission makers with ACE: They put no medical facilites in the missions and no medics. One player is a "medic" with lots of medical supplies, and other players only have bandages. This way if you get hurt you remain hurt for the duration of the mission, because the "medic" with medical supplies can only "stabilize" you, not heal.
Also the OFP: DR fanboy thing was a joke Hunter