Michael Moore's new documentary, "Sicko," is coming along just in time to get credit for launching a national debate on healthcare. But the irony is that the biggest single factor in the renewed push toward national health insurance is coming not from Moore's advocacy but from the Iraq war, which Moore loathes so much.

Without a doubt, "Sicko" will have an effect. House Democrats, for example, held a mock hearing in which Moore and "Sicko" were the "witnesses." So "Sicko" is destined to be big — bigger than his anti-Iraq war movie "Fahrenheit 911," bigger than Moore himself.

Critics will whack at some aspects of the movie — the tort-claiming trial lawyers showcasing their clients, the purported solidarity between Cuban and U.S. firefighters — but in fact, Moore or no Moore, the United States is moving toward a rendezvous with national health insurance.

All the Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed a huge federal healthcare expansion, while one of the leading Republican candidates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has actually signed a comprehensive program into law in his state. Just last month, a CNN/Opinion Research poll found that 64 percent of Americans support national health insurance, "even if this would require higher taxes." Yet it wasn't that long ago — 1996 to be exact — that a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, declared, "The era of big government is over." So why the shift? What's going on? Well, as with so much about our lives today, the shift began on 9/11.

All through the '80s and '90s, libertarianism was in the ascendancy, as Americans concluded that, yes, government was the problem. To be sure, the state didn't get much smaller in terms of spending or regulating, but statism shrank enormously in the political imagination.

Peacetime leads to an increase in individualism; wartime leads to the opposite. On 9/11, we were reminded that even yuppie masters of the universe needed the help of blue-collar first responders. On 9/11, we were reminded that there are worse things than high marginal tax rates — things such as al-Qaida.

Thus the libertarian tide crested, and a new wave of patriotic solidarity arose. Indeed, for a while, George W. Bush's approval rating stood at 90 percent. Sadly, Bush miscalculated on foreign policy. By diverting attention away from Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, toward Iraq, he made one of those enormous blunders that historians will study with wonder — even as Americans weep.

But, on domestic policy, Bush showed a surer hand. He rode the solidaristic social wave on the home front, signing into law Medicare Part D — the prescription-drug program for seniors — in December 2003. In other words, nine months after Uncle Sam went into Iraq, he also committed to spending trillions on medicines at home. Even as the warfare state was expanding, the welfare state, too, was enlarging.

In "Sicko," Moore derides the prescription-drug program as a giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies; one might think, seeing the film, that the drug companies just take the money without dispensing life-saving medicines in return.

Moore supports a government-run, "single-payer" health plan, as seen in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and, bizarre as it may sound, Cuba. So while the director-activist has captured the historical moment when he urges Americans to shift from "me" to "we," he will have a harder time persuading the United States to totally socialize its healthcare system.

Still, the trend is clear: Sacrifice in wartime inspires collective action at home.

But there is one little thing — actually not so little. "Sicko" doesn't mention illegal immigration. Yet the political left will have to deal with that issue before moving ahead with its grand plan.

History proves that you can't run a welfare state with open borders; the patriotic feeling that inspires national health insurance applies to fellow citizens, not to the teeming masses of the world.

James P. Pinkerton is a columnist for Newsday. Reach him at pinkerto@ix.netcom.com.