The federal health minister, Mark Butler, said the government is trying to understand a “dynamic shift that’s happening in the global pharmaceutical market” following a new agreement that will see the UK pay 25% more for new US medicines, as drugs policy experts warn the deal sets a “problematic precedent”.

Under the deal, the UK will double the percentage of GDP it allocates to buying innovative therapies from the US. The deal has led to UK experts expressing concern that the National Health Service will pay more money for new treatments, with less money left to pay for health staff and proven existing treatments.

The US says it hopes other countries will follow.

Asked whether the Australian government would be open to paying more if it faced comparable demands from the US, Butler said the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) had “delivered extraordinary things for the Australian people for more than 80 years now” allowing “access to the world’s best medicines at affordable PBS prices”.

“The first assurance I want to give the Australian people is that we will never compromise those two important elements of the PBS,” he said.

“We’re engaging closely, not just with the US administration, particularly through the embassy in Washington, but with global pharmaceutical companies that will be impacted with this as well.”

He said he would not preempt what those discussions might lead to.

“Obviously, we are trying make sure we understand this dynamic shift that’s happening in the global pharmaceutical market,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “We’re one of 193 other countries who are engaging with the Americans about this.”

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A spokesperson from Medicines Australia, which represents the pharmaceutical industry, said the deal reinforces the “important and urgent need” for the government to implement reforms to the Health Technology Assessment (HTA), which informs decisions about which health technologies can be sold in Australia and reviews medicines to be made available on the PBS.

A review of the HTA, delivered in 2024, made 50 recommendations for reforms including those needed to improve and accelerate patient access to new medicines.

Asked if pharmaceutical companies plan to use the US/UK deal to pressure the independent Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee to approve more high-cost drugs that currently don’t meet Australian value-for-money standards, the spokesperson said: “Our focus is to work with government to implement the recommended reforms to our Health Technology Assessment … to ensure Australians patients continue to receive access to new and innovative medicines”.

Health policy experts, however, told Guardian Australia that the agreement signals a shift away from value-for-money assessment for medicines.

Prof Libby Roughead, director of the University of South Australia’s quality use of medicines and pharmacy research centre, said agreeing to pay 25% more for medicines is “not really a loosening of cost-effectiveness thresholds … it’s really just throwing it out”.

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Roughead said it was too early to know how the UK changes might affect Australia, but said global repercussions are “inevitable”. While Australia had a “good, solid system,” and she warned against panic, she said the key question would be whether the PBS continued to assess “When is new good? When is new better? And when is new not so good?”.

Every country needs a rigorous and independent way for assessing that, she said.

Dr Barbara Mintzes, a professor of evidence-based pharmaceutical policy at the University of Sydney, said the UK/US agreement should be viewed “… as a concern internationally, for all countries with public coverage of medicines”.

“It sets a very problematic precedent in terms of the influence of trade policy on domestic public health services,” she said.

“The UK NHS has already been dealing with severe underfunding for years and this deal is not likely to improve the situation … quite the opposite.

“It would be a concern in the sense that if the US has successfully negotiated this type of deal in one country, it could put pressure on other countries for a similar deal. Hopefully Australia would not agree to any deal with the US that uses tariffs as a tool to force up pharmaceutical prices.”