Merged Clip Stereo Audio becomes Mono

For some reason when you merge clips, Premiere turns your stereo audio into mono. So each clip of my dialogue has two tracks of seemingly Mono audio. When I check the properties, it claims that each track is stereo--but there is only one waveform.

Can I delete the 2nd track and trust that the 1st track is indeed Stereo? My concern is that you can hear the difference when you delete one of the tracks.