SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Consumers, nurses and doctors should take advantage of looming changes in the medical system to force creation of universal health care, consumer advocate Ralph Nader said Monday.

"As Yogi Berra said, `When you reach a fork in the road, take it," he told the California Nurses Association.

A Green Party candidate for president, Nader said for-profit health maintenance organizations are "destabilizing themselves by their own greed."

"I think we are in a real transitory period, which gives us a real opportunity to recast our health care system in a nonprofit mode and implement universal health care," he told reporters before his speech.

He said he doubted that Vice President Al Gore or Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the likely Democratic and Republican candidates for president, would push for "sound medical plans for every American."

"I see piecemeal, complex, inscrutable kinds of programs by two politicians who are afraid to take on" medical corporations, Nader said.

He said 47 million Americans lack health insurance and another 20 million don't have enough.

Nader got less than 1 percent of the vote as the Green Party's presidential candidate in 1996, but he said that was because he didn't really campaign.

This time around, he said he plans to raise several million dollars, qualify for federal matching funds and campaign actively in all 50 states.