Drugs that can prolong life for women with advanced breast cancer might become publicly available, but only for women who haven't been diagnosed yet.

The cancer treatments subcommittee from Pharmac assessed funding applications for Ibrance and Kadcyla in its September meeting, with the minutes released this week.

The subcommittee recommended Ibrance be funded for people who have not already received a hormonal treatment for their metastatic breast cancer and Kadcyla be funded, but only for women who haven't used Perjeta.

This would eliminate large groups of people from being able to access the two drugs and breast cancer drug advocates say it highlights how broken the system is.

Breast Cancer Aotearoa Coalition chairwoman Libby Burgess said the announcement meant all the women who had petitioned Parliament in October for the medications to be publicly funded would not be eligible for the funded treatment.

"It's very disappointing just before Christmas to get that notice."

The recommendations would go to a pharmacology and therapeutics advisory committee. Then, it would go to Pharmac, which would decide what priority the funding would have and make any final decisions.

Burgess said she believed the recommendations had been made as a cost-cutting exercise as it excluded so many women from being able to access the drugs. "It's just cruel, it doesn't really make sense.

"There's something deeply wrong about how New Zealand funds medicine."

Pharmac chief executive Sarah Fitt said in a letter that while its clinical advisers said Ibrance treatment looked promising, the evidence showed modest benefits for patients and the price was prohibitive.

Malcolm Mulholland, whose wife Wiki Mulholland has metastatic breast cancer, the most advanced stage of breast cancer, said it had spread to her bones. He, too, believed the recommendations were to cut costs.

"It's basically for women who are going to be diagnosed with stage four breast cancer in the future."

There was no timeframe given as to when, or if, the drugs would be funded. "While we can't resolve the issue lives are being lost."

Mulholland said families would be sitting down over Christmas to work out if they could fund these treatments.

"Some women are going to have to make a really hard call over Christmas – 'can I afford this? If I can't, I'm going to die sooner'."

In relation to Kadcyla, the letter said evidence was both weak and poor quality and not directly relevant to New Zealand patients, because their evidence did not assess the use of the drug with Perjeta, which was publicly funded in New Zealand.

The advisers said there would be a small number of people in New Zealand who had not been treated with Perjeta who would benefit from Kadcyla, so they were recommending that Kadcyla be accessible for them.

This would be about 100 or fewer.

-Stuff/Kirsty Lawrence