The two Southeastern PA behemoths of health care are locked in battle. Independence Blue Cross (IBX) and the Crozer-Keystone system (whose facilities the hospitals in Upland, Chester, Ridley Park, Springfield, and Drexel Hill) have been unable to reach a new contract agreement. The current contract expires on August 19th, so the bickering is spilling into the press. The disagreement centers, of course, on the reimbursement schedule for care provided to patients.

According to reporting from Patti Mengers of the Delco Times, 90,000 IBX customers were notified of the pending contract expiration. At this time, patients are already seeing some of the negative impacts of the looming deadline. Keystone HMO and Personal Choice customers cannot get approvals for elective care or procedures scheduled to take place after the deadline.

After months of negotiation, IBX has made its kinda-sorta-mostly final offer, and declared it fair. Per the Delco Times, Crozer-Keystone doesn’t agree.

Crozer-Keystone Health System Chief Executive Officer Joan K. Richards does not agree.

“Both parties have invested a lot of time and effort into the negotiations but, as of today, we have been unable to reach an agreement that covers the cost of caring for our patients,” Richards noted Monday in a prepared statement.

Both sides would be financially devestated to have the contract negotiations fail. (Mutually assured destruction?) The hospitals would find a third of its patients without network health coverage. And Independence Blue Cross would surely feel the wrath of employers and subscribers.

If there’s one event that can surely bring me joy, its one quasi-monopoly arguing with another quasi-monopoly about how to divvy up my insanely high insurance premiums. I’m sure that their resolution to the current impasse will be to pass along the costs to families whose health and welfare hangs in the balance.

Single payer starts to sound more and more attractive each year that my premiums rise at rates double or triple the rate of inflation.