With national healthcare an early issue for Democratic presidential nominees, Michael Moore, the director who brought the documentary genre mainstream with his treatise on U.S. gun laws, “Bowling for Columbine,” is set to further the debate with “Sicko,” a film about the nation’s expensive healthcare system.

According to an article published this week in the New York Post, Moore aims to debut “Sicko” next month at the Cannes Film Festival. The documentary includes a Moore hosted-trip to Cuba for 9/11 Ground Zero workers in in search of cutting-edge healthcare from Castro’s socialized system, according to The Post.

In July 2006, Moore’s Web site reported that about 75 percent of “Sicko” had been shot. Several months earlier, Moore appealed to the public in a letter on his site asking for people to share healthcare horror stories.

“Ok, here’s your chance,” Moore wrote. “As you can imagine, we’ve got the goods on these bastards. All we need now is to put a few of you in the movie and let the world see what the greatest country ever in the history of the universe does to its own people, simply because they have the misfortune of getting sick. Because getting sick, unless you are rich, is a crime, a crime for which you must pay, sometimes with your own life.”

Moore received 19,000 letters in response to his request, which he said took him nearly two months to read. “Slacker,” another Moore documentary, is also in the works. At the Toronto Film Festival in September, the controversial director mentioned the project as one that chronicles the aftermath of the 2004 election, according to FoxNews.com.