On July 19, 1984, Capt. Bob Bell of the United States Navy died.
Today, he is running for Congress in Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District.
Bell was in a car with his wife and 2-year-old daughter when the family was struck by a drunk driver’s pickup truck 30 years ago.
Bell’s wife was instantly killed, and his daughter was pronounced dead shortly after she arrived at the hospital.
Immediately after the collision, Bell crawled out of the car and tried to run to the other side of the vehicle to help his wife and child.
He collapsed on the pavement.
“The next thing I know, I’m on the other side of the barrier,” Bell said. “The barrier between life and death.”
He said he followed an angel up a ladder of light, but the angel told him to go back.
After awaking in his body, Bell underwent extensive medical treatment, including facial reconstruction.
He later remarried and currently has three children attending college in Louisiana.
Bell acknowledged that his story sounds hard to believe.
“Even though I was a Christian believer from an early age, I didn’t put a lot of stock in a lot of the supernatural stories that you hear,” Bell said. “If something like that had happened to someone else, I would’ve actually been skeptical because of my legal training. As a lawyer, you want evidence; you want proof.”
Bell served 30 years as a Navy Reserve JAG legal officer, handling international claims in 31 countries.
Another requirement of Bell’s job was to write bipartisan legislation on behalf of the Navy. Bell said he knows how to get bills passed and stressed the importance of good communication on both sides of the aisle.
Bell said he believes there are two classes of conservatives — static and dynamic. He identifies himself as the latter.
“A static conservative is one who basically takes up a defensive position when a more liberal proposal is put forward,” Bell said. “But a dynamic conservative would be one who would look deeper below the surface and say, ‘Now what can we do here that we could actually get passed, where we could work with some of these people who are against some of what we’re doing?’”
Though Bell is a guest columnist for the Tea Party of Louisiana’s website, he said he does not identify himself as a Tea Party member and writes his columns with the intent of better educating the Tea Party community.
One of Bell’s major oppositions to the Affordable Care Act is the way it affects America’s homeless.
Under Obamacare, Bell said emergency rooms will stop receiving reimbursement for treating uninsured walk-in patients, encouraging hospitals to turn away the homeless.
Bell said the Affordable Care Act, which requires all Americans to obtain health insurance, is fundamentally flawed because there will always be an uninsured segment of the population.
“It’s not realistic when it comes to homeless people especially, because they don’t have an address where an insurance bill can be mailed to, they don’t have a computer where they can go to an online marketplace and they don’t have a bank account where they can pay a premium,” Bell said.
Though Bell acknowledged he is in favor of Obamacare’s repeal, the “dynamic conservative” said he would never call for the elimination of a program without a replacement in mind.
“I would never take something away without constructing an alternative that’s better,” Bell said.
Bell’s plan to replace the Affordable Care Act is a three-step proposal that includes restoring the tax deduction for paying individual insurance premiums.
Bell also said he supports giving those on Medicaid a tax credit to buy private health insurance.
“You get rid of Obamacare and you put people back to work, and all of a sudden we have a positive cash flow for the federal government. You could probably even cut taxes in some areas,” Bell said.
Bell said there are some tax cuts that could be made without sacrificing federal revenue but warned of the consequences of an excess of tax cuts.
“Tax cuts don’t necessarily work unless you’re aiming at the right target and you hit the right target,” Bell said.
Bell criticized the tax reductions of the previous administration, saying there were better alternatives than George W. Bush’s across-the-board cuts.
“That does help, but it’s not as effective as taking a more detailed approach,” Bell said. “It’s kind of like a surgeon who is very careful compared to one who says amputate.”