From a letter sent out to supporters:

Back in February, I asked if people would send me letters describing their experiences with our health care system. I received over 19,000 of them. It was truly overwhelming as we literally took a month and read them all. To read about the misery people are put through on a daily basis by our profit-based system was both moving and revolting. That’s all I will say right now.

We’ve spent the better part of this year shooting our next movie, “Sicko.” As we’ve done with our other films, we don’t discuss them while we are making them. If people ask, we tell them “Sicko” is “a comedy about 45 million people with no health care in the richest country on earth.”

But like my other movies, what we start with (General Motors, guns, 9/11) is not always what we end with. Along the way, we discover new roads to go down, roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas — and challenge us to reconsider the ones we began with. That, I can say with certainty, is happening now as we shoot “Sicko.” I don’t think the country needs a movie that tells you that HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies suck. Everybody knows that. I’d like to show you some things you don’t know. So stay tuned for where this movie has led me. I think you might enjoy it.

At this point, we’ve shot about 75% of “Sicko” and will soon begin putting it together. It will be released in theaters sometime in 2007.