The advertising mentioned in the article is the direct to patient kind. Most of the European continent has always had blanket ban on such advertising. Yet the MRSA infection rates are dramatic. Unless Norway also banned direct marketing to the MD's as well, banning advertising will have not much effect on MRSA. (Even in the US, few direct to patient advertising targets pathogen causes illness and those that do are aimed at viral diseases.) The latter would be a lot harder to do as you'd run afoul of various basic rights concerns.

The chief problem is the flouting behavior of the MDs. When the last batch of antibiotics were put in circulation, it was publicly and privately (through the continuing ed programs) stressed that these drugs were only for use as a last resort. Not 6 months later, they topped the list of subscribed medications.

It sounds like Norway has finally put a pricetag on that behavior:

If I treated someone with an infection in Spain with this penicillin, I would probably be thrown in jail

He may have spoken in jest, but it is probably not far off the mark (e.g. revocation of prescription privileges).

Of course, implementing something like this will take varying degrees of political courage depending on where you live. I'd say making these changes stands a good chance on the Continent. Most have single payer systems, MRSA is a hot topic with ill advised reactions already having made the news, and the public is growing ever wearier of Big Pharma's corruption. Going by the meek reaction of the CDC, there's still a lot of work to do here....

It has nothing to do with the skill of the MDs, or even the cleanliness of the hospital in general. That is why most Western nations are in such a pickle with regards to the MR strains. They are quite harmless until the skin is breached. You can sterilize surfaces, but you can't get the air germ free (outside of a handful of isolation cells). Another large portion of infections happens not in the OR, but once the patient has been returned to their room. Catheter sites in particular are a weak point.

One vector for the bacteria to enter a hospital is through visitors. That is one of the reasons why cather sites are so vulnerable. MRSA in particular is carried on the skin, just like its non-MR counterpart. If the freely available antibiotics do indeed breed more MR strains, then that is a reason for concern as a larger portion of the population is expected to carry them.

Unless, of course, MDs are less prone to carpet bomb every sign of infection with antibiotics because the patients already got their own fix. But as you saw, data is hard to come by.