Fund - Billion

The federal government wants to use the bulk of the proposed Medicare co-payments to fund medical research. Within six years, this fund will be the largest medical research endowment in the world. The fund will start with 1.1 billion dollars next year, and the government expects it to grow to $20 billion by 2020. By 2023, it's expected to hand out about a billion dollars a year in research funding. So how does it compare? The UK's Welcome Trust has an endowment worth the equivalent of over twenty-nine billion Australian dollars. It's funded research like the mapping of the human genome and the Cancer Genome Project. In the U.S., the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has assets worth over 18 billion and employs over 700 scientists. It's not an endowment fund, but the U.S. government gave its National Institute of Health over 30 billion dollars last year. The Welcome Trust is already bigger than Australia's proposed fund, and the U.S. government spends more money a year on medical research than Mr. Hockey's total fund. So, on the evidence available today, Mr. Hockey's claim that it'll be the biggest in the world is overblown. That's a fact. Check for more details on our website. Which of the following is true regarding proposed medical research fund in Australia?