<p>About 30 UCLA students will learn how to lobby and will promote universal health care in Sacramento next Tuesday during the second annual Universal Health Care Lobby Day. <br/>The UCLA chapter of the American Medical Student Association will join more than 300 other AMSA members from California colleges in an effort to change the state?s current health care system. <br/>?As future physicians, we feel the health care situation is in a dire state and we feel some change needs to take place,? said Yushiu Lin, internal vice president of AMSA. <br/>Lin, along with other members from AMSA, handed out fliers and balloons with health care facts to students in Bruin Plaza on Wednesday to inform students why they are lobbying next week. <br/>One statistic read that 18,000 people between the ages of 25 to 64 die annually from a lack of health insurance, making it the seventh leading cause of death. <br/>?We?re doing this to encourage people to join us and get people to think about our health care system, or lack of it, in California,? said Jane Ma, community and public health co-chair of AMSA. <br/>On Tuesday, students plan to lobby for Senate Bill 840, a universal health care bill prepared by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica. The bill will introduce a single-payer health care system, where everyone pays into one fund that is used solely for health care. <br/>Students will be taught how to lobby in the morning and will attend a rally in the afternoon. They will also meet with state senators and congressmen from their home districts to discuss the issue, Lin said. <br/>Last year, the 150 students who attended the event were able to acquire two co-signers for the bill, said Erica Brode, external president of AMSA. <br/>?The rally was really great. It was intimidating at first because you go there and get trained in the morning, and in the afternoon, you already have your appointment with a senator or representative,? Lin said. <br/>Talking to the government officials was one of the best parts of the event for Brode. <br/>?I lobbied (Assemblyman) Roger Niello in person and even though he was a staunch Republican against SB 840, we spoke for an hour and 15 minutes about health care options,? Brode said. <br/>Until universal health care is achieved, Brode said Universal Health Care Lobby Day will be an annual event. <br/>?We want to inform the student body and inform others; change is the motive here,? Brode said. <br/>SB 840, which AMSA lobbied for last year as well, was approved by both the Assembly and Senate, but vetoed by the governor. <br/>The bill will be re-introduced this year. <br/>?We want change. Right now, doctors have no decision-making power, due to the insurance companies dictating what they?ll pay for,? Brode said. ?Instead of strict protocol, SB 840 would give doctors autonomy to a certain extent.? <br/>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently announced his health care reform ideas, in which health care will be mandatory for everyone in California and those without it will be subject to tax penalties. Under this plan, employers with 10 or more employees would either have to pay 4 percent of the employees? payroll to health care, or offer health insurance to them. <br/>Unlike SB 840, the governor?s plan will not eliminate private health insurers. <br/>?I don?t believe that government should be getting in there and should start running a health care system that is kind of done and worked on by government,? Schwarzenegger said in a speech in July. <br/>?I think that what we should do is be a facilitator.? <br/>Several government officials, especially Republicans, oppose both SB 840 and the governor?s plan. <br/>?Imposing a new jobs tax on employers of any size and expanding costly government mandates is the wrong approach, one which will devastate our economy,? Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines said in a statement. <br/>With reports from Bruin wire services.</p><br><br><a href='; target='_blank'>;